Interesting Revelations of the Marriage-Bed
by bugsfic
Summary: Sometimes the story begins "And they lived happily ever after."
1. Chapter 1

_Thank you Aussie Girl for aussifying this fic!_

* * *

Lucien fell to the mattress beside Jean, fighting for his breath. She could only giggle with what little energy that she had left. As she rarely giggled, she chalked this up to the release of pent-up tension. Which made her giggle more. His deep chuckles joined her.

One blue eye peeped at her from the depths of his pillow. "Bloody hell, woman, we should have done this ages ago."

She pretended to be perturbed at his use of profanity but was more put out to find that she somehow still had one stocking on. As she struggled to remove it and tried to find her way under the bedcovers, she noticed her brassiere had landed atop the bedside lamp like something from a Hollywood sex romp. When she settled her head on the pillow, a few remaining hairpins poked her skull. She carelessly tossed them onto the bedside table, feeling very decadent.

Lucien joined her under the bedding, hurling a stray sock in the general direction of the laundry basket, and laughed again. He sounded joyful in a way that Jean had never heard before from him.

"Really, Lucien," she said severely, needing to be watchful that he didn't get out of control too soon after their wedding.

He didn't look the least bit contrite.

Tugging the sheet over her bare breasts, she ran her palm along his sweat-sheened shoulder. "It was rather nice, wasn't it," she conceded. She gave his arm a squeeze. Everything had happened so quickly that she really hadn't gotten a good look at her freshly-minted husband in a state of undress and now it seemed too late to ask for a viewing.

Lucien had insisted on carrying her over the threshold, despite her protests that they were too old for this, and it was their long-time home, hardly a honeymoon cottage. A quick kiss once they were inside, she still cradled in his arms, had become an intense, frantic kiss, and then the bedroom was just a turn to the left...

Earlier in the day, she'd set out a bottle of champagne and an ice bucket on the kitchen table, hung her lovely new negligee in the bedroom, and put his new gown and pyjamas in the bathroom for him to change as well. But in truth, the whole script as she read it sounded terrifying. Two people, intimate in all ways but one, to dress in their costumes and take to the stage for the last scene before the final act... Count on Lucien to just cut right to to the chase, as it were.

In the darkness of the bedroom, it was simple to lose her uncertainty—what did he want and expect, what did she need and envision—and just let nature take its course. Clothing roughly shed, until enough skin was exposed to make them both sigh in relief. It was going to be alright...Falling on the bed in a tangle of limbs, mouths finding that skin, giving heat to the chill, suckling away gooseflesh and nervous twitches, grumbles of displease when there was still undergarments in the way. Her leg around his waist, welcoming the invasion, her heel finding the cleft between his flexing haunches, pushing him on, even as the pressure was overwhelming, a bit painful after all these years. And the thought; this man will never simply shut it will he, as he babbled nonsense and endearments, one being the other... And the other thought; it's been so long. For everything; love and pleasure and need and this sort of joy and it's him, it's finally, completely him—

He broke through her silly thoughts by snorting into the pillow. "The first day," he repeated. He pulled her into a deep kiss. Kissing like this was still new and delicious, like his first taste of lychee. When their lips finally eased apart, he returned to the topic: "The very first day we met. Instead of fussing at you, I should have dragged you off to your bedroom—"

Her raised eyebrow stopped him cold.

He quickly amended his statement: "To the registry office, then to your bedroom."

She shook her head and patted his cheek affectionately. "No, dear. I wouldn't have had you." He laughed outright, but she was serious. " _This_ is the right time. We were two different people before."

His grin faded, and he nodded. "Yes, we're the right people now."

He burrowed his nose into the crook of her neck. She smelled so wonderful. He thought he'd had her scent memorised, but now, this close, he identified previously unknown notes. The smell of sex mingled in like lazily wafting smoke rising from a dying fire.

She shifted to nestle their bodies as closely together as pieces of a puzzle. His skin was surprisingly soft...she pressed her lips to the tip of his collarbone and snuggled closer still. She was drifting off when he spoke again. " _I_ still would have had you. I can say this now, since I'm fairly certain that you won't throw me over for being a complete drongo, having just discovered my previously unknown stellar qualities—" he said smugly.

She sighed and forced her eyes open to meet his humour-filled gaze. One spot of lovemaking and he had become truly insufferable.

"—but I was very pleasantly shocked to find my father's devoted housekeeper was in fact, a looker."

That woke her up. "Oh please," she said.

"I'm simply speaking as a man, Jean. Don't hold it against me."

"You thought I was a prude and prig. You had no interest in me, even in _that_ way."

He conceded her point by saying, "I immediately saw you were not some cheeky maid to chase around the kitchen," but added, "doesn't mean that I couldn't admire your pert bum."

That earned him a slap to his own flank. "Ow," he moaned plaintively. He rearranged the blankets to shield himself from future attacks. The truth hurt, after all. "The combination of repression and a tight skirt is damn sexy. Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"

She only grumbled and tugged some blanket back for herself. He waited, but her eyelashes fluttered shut again.

"Well?" he prompted.

"Well, what?" Her eyes remained closed. Although she would not ever compare the first husband to the second out loud, she was finding new appreciation for Christopher's habit of falling right to sleep afterwards. The wedding preparations had taken weeks, and she'd hardly slept at all the night before, then the day had been a complete whirl, capped off by this...she was suddenly exhausted.

He nibbled lazily at her jawline. "Surely I made some sort of first impression."

Her eyes snapped open; her gaze was level when it met his. "You reminded me of a wild dog." All this talk of sweeping her off to bed...He'd been a skittish shadow in the dim halls, only the whites of his eyes glistening at her. As if that would seduce any woman!

He wasn't offended. A slow smile spread on his face. "And you're one to take in strays, aren't you?"

This time he was ready for the blow, and captured her hand, pulling her over on top of him with easy strength. Jean was going to have to get used to that as well. Years spent standing on her own two feet, finding her balance when she stumbled, it was a shock knowing that he could lift her lightly as if she was one of his mother's flakes of gold.

He snapped on the bedside lamp. She'd get her peek now. Arms spread wide, he lay out below her. Selfishly, she kept the sheet clutched to her chest as she rose upright, balanced on his thighs. She took her time, following her gaze with her fingertips, tracing from this throat, over his wide pectorals and lightly down his ribs, careful not to tickle him. He only watched, his fists clenched in tension. She needed to bare herself too, but she didn't release the sheet.

She'd never confessed the very first time that she'd laid eyes upon Lucien. Perhaps this was the right moment. She'd started telling him a dozen time before the wedding and embarrassment overcame her every time. Then it felt too late and not worth the trouble. Now it was exactly the right moment.

"I saw you, when you came to visit your father. Before going off to school in Edinburgh," she whispered.

"That bloody visit," he groaned, rubbing his hand across his brow. "To be that uncomfortable every moment, and knowing I had to deal with Monica before I left, only to take the coward's way out...I'm afraid that I don't remember any lovely girl—"

She laughed, feeling a bit braver. "I was a little runt of a thing. I hadn't hit my growth spurt yet. My mother had hired me out to Dr Blake to make some pocket money for school clothes. He'd wanted everything spick and span for your visit."

The reproach in her voice appeared to go unnoticed by Lucien. He only asked casually, "So you saw me about the house."

She gulped. "In a manner of speaking."

He raised his eyebrows, waiting expectantly.

She was mortified now that the moment of truth was upon her. Rushing about this grand house, both impatient to be done so she could bury her nose in a novel from the doctor's shelves and intrigued by all the fantastic objects in its rooms, so unlike the simple farmhouses that she knew. She'd been told that Lucien Blake would be home at some point this week, and this had been a source of excitement for Dr Blake. In her usual headstrong fashion, she'd darted into the son's bedroom without checking to see if it was occupied.

Someone was. A long, lean male body was draped across the narrow boy's bed, deep in a nap. He wore nothing but a pair of snug white underpants. The window was open to bring in a breeze on the warm summer day. Despite having two older brothers, Jean had never seen anything like him before. His skin was smooth and golden, his limbs sleek as a cat. Honey-coloured curls drooped over his brow. His throat was a lovely arch as his head lolled, and his square jaw and high cheekbones were like a film star to her young imagination.

He had shifted in his sleep and Jean swallowed a squeak. His hand slid along his belly and she couldn't stop watching its course toward the waistband of his shorts. _Something_ was moving under the fabric and he gave a deep sigh. Even as she'd wheeled on her heel and fled, Jean would mark that moment as when she became aware of boys.

"Wait, there was a hired girl named Jeanie, but she couldn't be you—"

Jean was relieved that her confession would go untold. "Why not?"

"She was tiny! This little sprite, dashing around, slowing down barely long enough to run a duster over anything. Truly, you weren't doing much." His grin earned him yet another light swat.

"I told you. I had a growth spurt later."

His hand ran up her long calf, plucking at the edge of the sheet that she clutched. "And I'm forever grateful."

Jean also remembered looming over Mei Lin and feeling clumsy around the much smaller and delicate woman. She sighed.

The next time she'd seen him in a state of undress, he'd only been back in Ballarat a few days. Jean had been in the sunroom, checking the tubers that she had nestled in damp moss. One was leafing out nicely. While potting up the newly sprouted begonia, she heard a thundering axe fall start coming from the backyard. It was not the day that Joe Potter came to do her heavy yard work. Curious, she wiped her hands on her apron and stepped out of the sunroom. Following the sound, she came around the woodshed, and discovered Lucien Blake chopping on a log. And more shockingly, he was stripped down to a sweat-soaked singlet.

She turned her back to him. "Dr Blake, what are you doing?" she asked, addressing the nearest gum tree.

The axe fell silent. "I'd say what does it look like I'm doing, but you aren't watching me."

"We have a man who comes in and splits the logs for firewood. You don't need to do that."

"I want to do it." His petulance was wearing on her nerves.

"Fine. I'll get you some water then. You'll have a thirst in this heat."

She returned shortly with a tray, ice water in a pitcher, and two glasses. She was feeling a bit parched too. This time she forced herself to look upon Lucien. She'd previously noticed that his build was heavier than most men and had assumed it was the usual middle-aged spread. Now she saw it was something else entirely. His limbs were thick with muscle, supported on wide bones. She blinked slowly to keep from fluttering her eyelashes. This was the last thing that she'd expect from a learned physician.

As such, he wasn't particularly good at chopping wood, but he struck the log as if a man possessed.

"Dr Blake." He didn't respond. She was sharper. "Dr Blake!"

He swung the axe high above his head and slammed it into the chopping block. Wiping his hands on his singlet, he approached. Now she forced her eyes to not blink at all. She hadn't noticed his hands until this moment. They weren't like Thomas's, which were soft and always clean. His knuckles were sharp, the backs of his hands corded with thick veins. She dragged her gaze up to his eyes and was immediately worried. His eyes were glazed, as though he wasn't really there.

She held out a filled glass. "Drink slowly now."

He flicked a smile at her. "Thanks." Leaning against the side of the shed, he tucked his free hand under his other arm. This made his bicep bulge and his chest broaden even wider, stretching the damp cotton of his undershirt.

Jean released one shaky breath. "So."

"Yes?"

"As I said, this really isn't necessary—"

"It'll save Dad money for me to chop the wood."

"Joe is working off his bill. His wife had a difficult birth with her last."

"Is there something else he can do around here?"

"He prunes the trees—"

"Good. I don't like to prune."

She frowned. He spoke just like the son of the manor.

"You could hurt yourself doing this," she pointed out.

"It's a risk I'll take."

She tried to explain: "But there's no need—"

"There is. I need to do this."

She couldn't stop herself. "Why?"

He drained his glass with deep gulps. She watched his thick throat work the water down and sipped her own water so rapidly that she nearly choked. She thought he wasn't going to reply but then spoke, low and fast: "When I came out of the camp, I weighed ninety-two pounds. I was able to walk through the gates, because I'd promised myself that I would when we were freed, but I collapsed a dozen yards out. A Pommie soldier had to carry me like a baby to the medics." His voice was flat and unemotional. Jean fought tears. "I swore that I'd never be that weak again. Never."

He put the empty glass down and returned to the axe. The conversation was obviously finished.

Steadying herself by grasping the tree for support, then Jean retrieved his glass, filled it again and left it on a gate post for him. She headed back to the sunroom to finish her planting but couldn't stop seeing the tall, painfully thin man who'd wandered the streets of Ballarat shortly after the war had ended. Everyone had whispered that it was Lucien Blake, but spotting him through the grocer's window, she wouldn't have known him. Only the blue eyes, huge on his gaunt face, gave the stamp of a Blake. His blond hair cropped close, like brittle grass broken short. His beard was as if dust had settled on his cheeks. His hands were much too large for his long arms hanging off wide shoulders.

He'd drifted around town until one day he was just gone. Thomas Blake had let it be known that his son, once his health had returned, had gone walkabout. He'd made it sound like a short absence, but in another couple years, Jean would come to work for the doctor, and more years would pass with no return until now.

In the dim bedroom, Jean continued exploring Lucien's shoulders and chest with a light touch. She was the investigator now. "Perhaps you caught my eye," she conceded. Under her fingerpads, she found ridges and indentations denoting old scars. Barely visible, they were sinking back into his skin. This pleased her. Every day, he was healing. She was also happy to see his body thickening and plumping up. She was feeding him well. The lean wild dog, his ribs showing under that sweaty singlet, was becoming fat and satisfied.

Lucien teased at the hem of the sheet before slipping his hands beneath it and up her legs.

"Surely, you're not—" She gave a quick glance downward. A shadow retained Lucien's modesty but she could still tell...or could she? Perhaps each man's body worked differently and she shouldn't expect Lucien to be like Christopher. Despite having two children, she felt nearly as inexperienced as a virgin bride. One man was so...singular. She suddenly wished that she had friends with more varied backgrounds than her own.

"Not yet," he said easily, as his hands continued their slow journey. "You've wrung me out like one of your tubs of washing."

Truth be told, he was glad to not have the distraction of arousal. He could truly explore his bride and try to regain some control. The evening had not gone as he'd played it out numerous times in his mind leading up to the wedding—and that had made it all the more overwhelming to have been carried away, or rather, find himself carrying her straight into the bedroom.

He'd wanted to learn her body as he was now. The weight of her breasts perfectly balancing in his palms. To test her reactions; her slight gasp as his thumbs rolled her nipples. The vision of her biting her lower lip; her pupils widening. Still she clung to the sheet but he didn't mind. The sense of the forbidden, even with a gold ring on her hand glistening in the dim light.

She was a stranger. Her neat hairstyle now a tangle of curls around her flushed cheeks. Her bright lipstick long since worn off by kisses, the traces in a loose smudge around her mouth. The look in her eyes...gone was the guarded expression which had been their constant mirror image for years. It was now...confidence. She knew what power she'd gained over him.

The corner of his mouth quirked. For years, he'd used others' desires and needs to his advantage to gain necessary information. He'd travelled down dank alleys where men rutted on prostitutes and ignored them. Brothels were convenient places to meet informants. No one remembered faces there. His own passions were something to be suppressed. And he was a married man searching for his wife.

In the mining town, there had been two types of women; the wives, or the prostitutes and loose women in the pubs. Those women were his patients, never to be seen in any other way.

He supposed men like Patrick Tyneman, who only saw women as those sort of objects to be used, would say about Lucien what they'd said about Thomas Blake, that he was led around by his dick. Laughing, he could only think there were worse things in life, and pitied Patrick for not knowing that.

"What?" Jean asked breathlessly, pulling the sheet up to her throat.

In honesty, he said, "I was thinking how happy you've made me."

She did her familiar eyeroll and he decided to try and crack her control. his hands left her breasts and smoothed across her stomach. He circled her belly button with his thumb and watched her carefully for any sign of unease. Instead, she raised her chin and squared her shoulders, a common gesture for her, but now it made his breathing rush. The gauntlet had been tossed down; one of her white calfskin gloves. His hands travelled lower, circling towards the apex of her thighs.

He won and lost the showdown. Just as his fingertips touched damp curls, she grasped his wrist. Flopping over, she snuggled under his chin. He could feel the heat of her blush against his neck. Although he had been pleased to find Jean quite enthusiastic, it seemed that he would still have to introduce her to some of the more adventurous possibilities. Not an unpleasant chore in the least...

"I can make _you_ happy too, Jean. No need for me to play as well."

"I'd rather play together. More fun that way." Drowsy once more, she suggested, "There's always going to sleep."

"Can't."

Breaking her new rule already, she told him, "You know, other men drop right off to sleep afterwards."

He kissed the top of her head. "Have trouble sleeping. And now there's this distraction lying beside me."

"Try."

"You could tell me a bedtime story."

"It's been too long since I had bad little boys. I don't remember any." She pulled the blanket under their chins, trying to give him a hint.

"Tell me the story of how we met when I came back to Ballarat for the last time," he suggested.

"You were there," she pointed out.

"We were two different people, remember?"

She sighed.

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

That got her attention. She propped herself up on her elbow. He smirked but didn't speak.

"Well?" she demanded.

~ end Chapter One


	2. Chapter 2

_Continued thanks to Aussie for help. Who knew that they spell mustache differently down under?_

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Lucien opened the door on his childhood very slowly. He wasn't surprised that it was changed. Was anything the same for him anymore? The cover was different on his bed, and all his boyhood momentos were swept away, even the framed photograph of he and his mother at the lakeside which had sat on the bedside table.

"Someone's been sleeping in my bed," he grumbled.

He slowly paced the room, touching those things that were the same. The bronze vase lamp with the mica shade. His small desk with the knife scars on the surface, carved as he was bored beyond reason while studying the hours prescribed by his father. He was surprised at the lack of dust or musty smell. His father had mentioned his wonderful housekeeper in his letters. This must be her work.

Jean noticed that the door to one of the spare bedrooms was open. But when she reached in to pull it shut, she saw someone was in the room. Not Danny, popped in for an afternoon kip, but a wider set of shoulders and a shaggy head of hair. Not giving herself time to think, she snatched down the cricket bat which hung on the wall.

The intruder whirled, raising his fists. Jean lifted the bat above her head.

"Who're you?"

"What do you want?"

Both talked at once in a jumble over each other.

Face to face, Jean didn't find this man anymore reassuring. Sunburnt waves of sandy hair fell over his brow and he had a bushy, speckled beard and thick moustache. Blue eyes blazed at her.

"Who are you?" he repeated.

Exasperated, she barked, "And who are you?"

"This is my house."

"This is Doctor Blake's house," she said, furious.

A flash of a smile under the moustache. "I'm Doctor Blake."

"You're the son?"

He looked around the room. "I was."

She lowered the bat. "We were expecting you." It sounded like an accusation.

He unfurled his fists and held out his hands. "Here I am." He looked her over from head to toe and she fought the urge to cross her arms over her chest.

"And you are?" he prompted.

"Mrs Beazley, the housekeeper."

His eyebrows disappeared under his mop of curls. "You can't be."

"Well, I am." He may not know her, but she wouldn't have recognised Lucien Blake looking as rough as he did. She should offer him a cup of tea but instead, she wanted to whack him with the cricket bat.

"My father mentioned you often in his letters, but I was imagining someone more...that is, less..." He may have been blushing, but it was hard to tell with his beard.

She raised her chin defiantly but decided to ignore his...whatever his meaning was. Whether it was an insult or compliment, she couldn't tell. "Well I am," she repeated.

She looked around for a case. "Do you have your things? I'll put fresh sheets on the bed."

Lucien shrugged. "I won't be sleeping here much. I'll be at the hospital. Just stopped in to drop off my bag. It's downstairs."

She forced herself to be cordial. "I'll make you some tea then."

"I said that I won't be here often," he said, an edge to his voice. "I'll be going."

She rehung the bat and stepped back through the door. "Right then," she said sharply. "Please give your father my regards and let him know that I'll be along shortly."

He started to pass her.

"You are going to change?" she prompted.

He looked down at his clothing; baggy, frayed canvas trousers and a leather bomber jacket over an open-necked sports shirt, a pair of RM Williams boots on his feet. "All my things are the same, so I suppose these will have to suit." With that, he strode down the corridor, leaving her fuming.

oxo

Jean had been visiting Dr Blake daily at the hospital but today she was reluctant. His son hadn't come back to the house, so perhaps he was still there. But when she peeked into Thomas's room, he was alone and slumbering. She took the chair beside his bed and his eyelids eventually fluttered open.

"Jean," he said with his usually deep voice weak, and tears pricked to her eyes.

"Hello there." She fussed with his blanket, making sure it was tucked in close. He was often cold, even with the wall heater belching hot steam near his bed.

"Lucien," the old man murmured, peering around with his bleary gaze.

"I haven't seen him." She couldn't keep the tartness from her tone. "He was here?" Even as she asked, she noticed the dusty leather jacket hanging on the wall. He shouldn't have brought something so dirty into his father's room; surely as a doctor, he knew that—

"Yes." Dr Blake's short answer didn't seem to be because of his illness.

Deciding to ask nothing more, she offered Thomas some scones from her basket, keeping an eye out for the sister to come and scold them.

They had a cosy chat. Dr Blake was a pillar of the community but he did love a bit of gossip, and Jean was his best source. They didn't notice the door opening. Jean jumped in her chair as Lucien Blake was suddenly standing behind her.

"Where'd you come from?" she asked, breathless.

"Sorry," Lucien said.

"You've been gone some time," Thomas noted.

Lucien looked petulant. "Had a cuppa, that's all."

Jean could smell freshly smoked cigarette on him. Thomas Blake thought cigarette smoking a common, dirty habit. He was a pipe smoker. She pursed her mouth. Lucien cocked an eyebrow; he must have read her mind. She looked away.

"I should be off," she said briskly.

Thomas snagged her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Must you?" he asked weakly.

She could feel rather than see Lucien's pointed interest. She eased her fingers free gently from Thomas's hand and lay it on his bed. "I must stop at the shops before getting home."

"Lucien can escort you," Thomas insisted. "You'll need to be stock the larder with this big chap to feed."

Jean wouldn't look at Lucien. "No, really—"

"Of course, father," Lucien said stiffly, pulling himself up tall.

Jean saw no way out of this. She had to turn sideways to slide by Lucien, and still brushed against him. He smelled like dust, stale alcohol, and those cigarettes. He was looking down at her, his expression unreadable. She bolted through the door. He followed, easily keeping up with her hurried strides.

When it was clear that he wasn't leaving her side, she asked, "How long will you be with us?"

"Us?" There was a challenge in his tone that she didn't understand.

"Here in Ballarat," she explained.

For a moment, he looked lost. Finally he replied, "My father isn't well."

"He just needs rest after his heart attack," Jean said.

Lucien started to speak but then closed his mouth.

"It was very good of you to come. Your father has wanted you to for...well, as long as I've worked for him."

"Really," Lucien drawled.

"Yes. You're his only child—"

"You wouldn't know it mattered to him from the way that he's pushed me away all my life."

She stopped by the fountain in the hospital courtyard, hoping the babbling water would block out Lucien's indignant tone which was drawing the attention of others. She had to defend her friend. "Your estrangement has hurt him deeply—"

"You don't know him, not truly," spit out Lucien. He looked her up and down once more and she gripped her hands to keep from giving him a pop in the nose. "I'm sure that he shows you another side, though," he sneered.

What he was insinuating sank in. "I think that I can manage the shopping on my own," she said, barely able to speak with fury. Spinning on her heel, she stormed away, and he did not follow.

Lucien had another smoke before returning to his father's hospital room. Here only one day and he felt trapped already. His distaste for his old home town was perfectly symbolised by the housekeeper's judgmental gaze and prim-set mouth. With her fine figure and sparkling eyes, this woman shouldn't be locked up in a dark old house, taking out her bitter disappointments on the likes of him. He inhaled smoke, savouring the burn.

So what was she doing as his father's housekeeper anyway? Years of reading his father's periodic letters that had found him at the closest embassy had led Lucien to believe that his father was half in love with this Mrs Beazeley. In Lucien's own mind, he'd imagined some sweet older lady, plump and generous with the custard tarts after supper. Not a woman young enough to be Thomas's daughter, with a dancer's swing to her hips—

Lucien tossed the cigarette away, gaining an outraged look from a gardener. He strode off before he could be scolded.

The wall clock ticked slowly. His father's breathing rasped in counter-beat. His legs crossed, Lucien's foot jiggled, swinging impatiently. But he didn't know what he was waiting for.

He had to move, to run, to go somewhere. He needed a drink. His flask was in his jacket hanging by the door. He rose.

"You leaving?" Thomas as, rousting from his half-sleep.

"I thought that I should speak to your doctor."

"You are. I know it's not good." Thomas waved his hand, signalling Lucien to sit again. "It's not just a heart attack, son. It's congestive heart failure. I'd suspected as much for two years now—"

"But were ignoring it?"

"There's no cure," Thomas stated.

Lucien sat.

"I'm glad that you came, son."

"Of course, sir."

"Not in my mind. Frankly, I was surprised. And shocked—that beard! If your mother could see you—"

Lucien's mouth twitched with irritation under his thick moustache. "Yes. A great surprise on the face of her little boy."

"Lucie..."

"I should speak to your doctor." He rose again.

"I'm dying."

Lucien sat, feeling foolish.

"I'd hoped, when you returned to Australia last year, that you'd intended to come home."

The familiar reproach. Lucien took a deep breath to keep his tone from being harsh. "I needed to earn money, father, after leaving the service. The firm running the Mary Kathleen mine pays well. The work is interesting. Monitoring the effects of uranium mining along with general practice. There's nothing for me here."

"I still don't understand why you stayed in the Army after the war. Such an odd thing for a surgeon to be doing—"

"I was regular army, not drafted," Lucien said tartly. "I wouldn't be allowed to leave just because I'd spent three years being tortured. Back to work; right-O!"

His father fixed him with a sharp look. "I had the impression your motives were something besides duty."

Lucien had had one exchange with his father about his marriage, in a series of letters which had led to further estrangement. He knew that his father had always hoped that he would return to Ballarat someday, but with a Chinese wife, Thomas had deemed that impossible. It was out of spitefulness that he'd mailed photographs of his family to Thomas, not an attempt at reconciliation. Here is my beautiful wife and daughter that you will never know. He'd been right on that. Singapore had been under siege not long afterwards. He wondered sometimes if Thomas had ever sent a letter in reply. He didn't ask now.

"It was useful," Lucien acknowledged. Place to place, he'd travelled the Orient on assignment, and in each city, he questioned other survivors, refugees, ex-patriots far-flung across the region, to see if anyone had seen or heard anything of his family's fate. Nothing. Over ten years, and nothing. Then the Army had said that he was no longer fit for his duties and had discharged him. Bastards...it didn't matter how much he drank, he still got their filthy work done—

"Lucien!"

He must have spoken aloud. "Sorry, father."

"I want to go home, son."

"What—to the house?"

"Yes."

"But you need the care—"

"My son is a physician, you may remember. Arrange it." Thomas looked around the room with discontent. "Despite being a doctor myself, I despise hospitals."

Lucien rose one more time. "Yes, sir."

After dealing with the incredulous hospital administrators, he headed for the closest pub. He ordered his first pot and ignored the stares and whispers around him. Fobbed off the pubician's pointed questions with vague responses. He wasn't much of a beer drinker, but it was doing the job. His limbs lost their tension, his neck loosened. He could finally put his back to the entrance without watching over his shoulder. He did need to take a piss. In the gents, he had to prop an arm on the wall to stay upright over the trough. This made him laugh until nearly crying. He felt good for the first time since stepping off the bus from Melbourne.

Outside the first pub, he saw another establishment at the other end of the block. There he ordered whisky, straight up. A couple glasses later, and a bar patron finally got up courage to confront him. "New to town, are you?" he asked.

Lucien looked at him blearily. "What?"

"Are you a miner?"

"Yes, in a manner of speaking." Lucien smiled to himself.

"Struck it rich?"

Lucien lost his sense of humour. "No, coming up nothing but dust," he said, slapping his payment on the bar and leaving.

On the street, he spotted a bottle shop. Best to stock up, as his father had suggested. The larder was surely bare of any scotch whisky.

Lucien was coming out with his arms full of bags when he barrelled right into another man. The short, stout man wheeled about, trying to keep his balance. The sight struck Lucien as ridiculous and he barked a laugh.

"You bloody drunk!" the man sputtered, grasping a light pole to keep upright.

Lucien made sure none of his bags were in danger of dropping. "That I am," he said gravely. Then laughed outright.

The shorter man pulled himself up as tall as he could go. "I will have you arrested."

As if by magic, a uniformed policeman came striding down the street. "What's this all about?" he bellowed.

Lucien looked the copper up and down. He'd seen this sort plenty of times. Belligerent, eyes a bit too close together, mouth in a permanent cruel twist. Likely got out of active duty with some minor injury, or got some soft posting guarding the brig in Melbourne. Lucien stopped laughing.

"This person, this drunkard—"

"Stop calling me that," Lucien said coldly.

"Hobart, this boozer knocked me down in the street!"

"Now, Mr Tyneman, no worries, we'll get this settled."

"Tyneman?" Lucien squinted at the two men. "Not Patty—"

"That's Patrick Tyneman to you—" blustered Hobart.

"That's Mr Tyneman," Patrick seethed.

"You're all grown up," Lucien noted. "But I suppose neither of us are boys any longer."

"And who are you?" sneered Patrick.

Lucien was suddenly very tired and disinterested in continuing this conversation. He shouldered past Tyneman. "It's Lucien Blake."

"Say!" Hobart barked, grabbing his arm. "Hold up."

Lucien turned quickly out of the copper's hand. "Get off," he said, his voice low and cold. Hobart started to protest but Lucien's steel glare seemed to stop him.

"Mr Tyneman?" he asked Patrick, "should I take him in?"

Patrick appeared shocked. "Lucien—It can't be."

"Why not?"

"Have you been to see your father?"

"Of course. Why else would I come back to this place?"

"Ballarat is a fine city—"

Understanding dawned. "You never left, did you? Just a small man in a small town." Lucien started to walk off.

It was the copper who protested, "Hey, wait a minute!" while Patrick sputtered.

Lucien was half a block away when Patrick found his voice. "Your father must be so ashamed!" he yelled. Lucien didn't turn back.

The long walk home sobered him up a bit. When he got into the house, he was thirsty again. Fumbling around in the kitchen, he found a glass and cracked the seal on the first bottle of scotch. He was also hungry and rooted around in the icebox, discovering a piece of cold chicken and a jar of pickles. He fished them out with his fingers and ate the chicken straight from the bowl. All washed down with a few glasses and he was feeling much better. Perhaps a kip was in order—

"Dr Blake!" came a terrible voice from behind him.

He wheeled to stand so quickly that Jean screamed. The bowl crashed to the floor, shattering, with the chicken bones scattering. "Don't come up on me from behind," he hissed out, gripping the chair as hard as he could to keep from grabbing her.

She took a big step back. She was gasping in terror and it shamed him. Then when she crossed her arms tightly, he realised that he had been staring at her chest to note her rapid breathing and he was even more deeply mortified.

"I'm sorry," he said carefully, holding his hands up, and was pleased to see that they weren't shaking. "I just can't...please be careful coming up behind me. Usually I'll sense you coming, but I fear that I am—" He wavered on his feet. "A bit tired right at the moment."

Equally careful, she said, "Would you like me to make up your bed, Dr Blake?" Stooping, she began to clean up the mess. He should help her, but feared bending over in his current state.

A bed. His childhood bed. He was exhausted, but he couldn't face it. "No..." He wandered out of kitchen. The door stood open to his parents' bedroom. He looked at the bed, hanging off the doorjamb. Afternoons as a very small boy, when his mother would invite him to nap with her. She did seem to nap a great deal, he remembered...

He staggered into the room and fell on the bed. His feet felt so heavy...Someone was lifting them, one, then the other. His boots were slipping off his feet, and something warm and soft nestled under his chin. The door creaked shut and darkness blissfully closed in on him.

Caught up in his memories, Lucien hadn't truly slept. Jean had though. He had been watching, enjoying this new intimacy. The fluttering of her eyelashes as she dreamed—he hoped they were happy dreams.

She sighed, then grumbled—perhaps not pleasant after all?

He traced his fingertip across her cheekbone and down to her lips that parted at his touch. She gave a heavier sigh.

"You awake?" he asked hopefully.

She cracked one eyelid open. "Oh, it's you." She sounded slightly confused.

He wasn't amused. The corner of her mouth quirked. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she gave him a reassuring peck. "Yes, it's you."

He was still serious. "Did I frighten you?"

"Silly boy, I was just teasing you."

"No, I mean when I first crawled out from under my rock and came into this house. Drunken lout, dirtying up your kitchen, growling at you—"

She put her fingers to his lips. "You concerned me. Like I said, a wild dog." Her arms tightened around his neck and he didn't like how flat her voice became when she said, "And I was used to looking out for myself. No, you didn't scare me."

He pulled her close, trying to give her some of his strength. "Bravest woman I've ever known. That's why I love you."

"Silly," she called him, but her smile was bright in the dim room.

Her open, easy joy aroused him. He pushed down the blanket. "Let's have a look at you then," he said, business-like.

She half hissed, half giggled at the chill and arched toward his warmth. But he was intent on taking his time now that the first blinding need had been sated. When his mouth settled on one of her nipples, his beard stroked her tender skin, soft as down, but then prickled as he circled her breast, his lips and teeth equally gentle and and rough. She fell back to the mattress in a stupor of pleasure. She could barely lift her hands to run her fingers through his hair, down his neck, along his shoulders. Everything had slowed, matching the gentle ticks of the bedside clock.

Then his hand slid between her legs.

Her surprised gasp sounded very loud in their quiet bedroom and he immediately stopped everything. Embarrassed, she couldn't even look at him but quickly murmured, "It's alright, it's fine, it's...good," her face burning red. It had happened so wonderfully fast the first time, and she hadn't had a moment to think, only to feel. Now she simply had too much time.

When they had officially announced their engagement, Jean made arrangements to move in with her friend Margie until the wedding. She'd thought it would be some peace until the whirl that marriage with Lucien Blake would surely be. Instead, her usually level-headed friend revealed a previously unspoken interest in Jean's betrothed and his past.

"Are you nervous, Jean?"

"About what?"

"Well...measuring up, that is."

"It will be a change, that's sure. To go from housekeeper to doctor's wife—"

"Not that." Margie had fussed about poured out tea and left Jean waiting impatiently. "I mean...well, he was married to one of those sort of women, not refined like."

Jean was shocked. "I spent quite a bit of time with Mei Lin, and she was extremely refined."

"But she can never truly be," Margie explained patiently. "Those Orientals, they will do things that no respectable white woman would dream of doing—"

"Things?" Jean was truly confused.

Margie looked about her kitchen, making sure none of her children were within earshot. "Like in the Kama Sutra."

"That's from India, not China."

"It's all the same, isn't it? Those people aren't like us. And Lucien's obviously got a taste for that sort of thing. If I were you, well, I'd be worried, that's all I'm saying."

Jean had changed the subject, and would never think of her friend in the same way again. But a seed of doubt had been planted. It was forgotten in that first furious encounter, yet now with his hands, his mouth, moving achingly slowly in ways that she'd never been touched...

But she trusted him. Grasping his forearm, she encouraged him on. "It's fine, really fine," she stuttered.

His fingers sank into her warmth, and after the first adjustment to invasion, she gripped his wrist, not to stop him, but to assure him. "Really," she breathed in his ear.

His thumb stroked and circled, making her breathing speed up to match his ministrations. Her confidence fled again and she buried her face in the crook of his neck, hiding her tears. He'd worry that he was hurting her, but that was the last thing that she felt. Surely he wouldn't understand.

She had come across a book in his office one day, an illustrated version of the Kama Sutra. Curious at the title, she flipped it open. Colorful explicit drawings leapt off the page. She slammed it shut immediately. She would not be cowed though. There was an impressionable young woman in the house, Mattie. She stormed into the lounge where Lucien was reading the afternoon paper, and tossed it before him.

"You must put this away." She folded her arms and glared down her nose at him.

He glanced at it. "It goes on the third shelf of the bookshelf by my desk," he said mildly.

"I mean away. If it must be in the house, it can be in your bedroom. In a locked drawer."

He smirked. "Jean—"

"Mattie—"

"Is a nurse. And a modern young woman. I'm sure none of this is any shock to her."

"I'm quite sure it is," Jean countered. "If you must have that sort of...entertainment, it can stay in your bedroom." She felt terribly uncomfortable thinking about sex, Lucien, and his bedroom all in the same moment.

"It's not entertainment—" He folded the newspaper and put it aside, and lifted the offending book. "If you must know, I use this when patients come to me with difficulties..." He sounded matter-of-fact but he couldn't meet her eye.

She couldn't stop herself from asking. "Difficulties?"

"In..." He tilted his head toward his bedroom. "I've found with stoic farmers and cattlemen, it's easier to just show him a picture rather than try to explain. For one thing, most of them don't even know the proper terms for sexual organs, and I refuse to use the words that they do know." He gave a delicate shudder.

"What?" she gasped in horror. "You're not!" She tossed her hands in the air. "So I shall be expecting a flood of cancelled appointments by outraged wives!"

"It was the wives who made the appointments for their husbands," he said smugly.

"Oh." Her chin went up. "I see." She had spun on her heel and the book was never discussed again. The gold-leaf letters on the spine seemed to glow at her from the shelf every time she dusted, but she never touched it.

Now, with his fingers caressing her in ways that she'd never been touched, she really wished that she'd looked at the book. He was obviously so much more knowledgeable than her. Surely he wanted her to do something to him.

His fingers, slick and warm from her heat, circled her nipple, tugging at it until she was sobbing. His mouth replaced his touch to soothe her exquisite pain. Her head swam at this sight, his tongue licking her breast clean.

"I'm sorry, Lucien."

He looked up at her, trying to focus. "About what?"

"I just don't know—I mean, I can't give you what you want?"

"What the hell?" he said, irritating her. Surely he could tell what she was upset about. And then he did, shocking her. He took her face in his hands. "You're here. I'm amazed that you're here. You...you make me very..." He smiled, captured of her shaking hand and brought it down between their bodies. "Very."

"Oh well, yes, I see," she said, sounding like a dithering old lady to her ears. She best get with it then—get a lay of the land, so to speak...And from his deep groan and how he attacked her breasts again, she took it that her exploration was successful. Weight and heat and length; she gave him a wicked little smile that got a grin in reply. "Very," she echoed.

Emboldened by her success, her fingers traced over to his flank. Her thumb found a scar's ridge and she felt him flinch under her touch. Instead of snatching her hand away though, she pressed her palm against his hip as though she could smooth the anxiety away. His breathing slowed. Her lips at his ear. "Nothing will hurt you again. Nothing. I'll make sure of that."

His mouth went to her shoulder, and she couldn't tell if he was sobbing or suckling at her skin when his teeth closed on her flesh. Thickly, he told her, "I want to believe you."

Finding her own sort of bravery, Jean met his gaze. It seemed that she could be enough for him just the way that she was. He rolled onto his back and pulled her atop him, cradling her easily in his arms. She swooped down, confidence growing, mouth finding mouth, her nails turning to his skin until he growled.

They did seem to be having a problem though, as she wanted to have as much of her naked skin touching his as possible, keeping his erection trapped between their bellies. He finally couldn't stand it any longer and lifted her to straddle him. This time her gasp was of a little girl high on a swing, and her hair swung around her face with that freedom. She took pity on him and rose on her knees, and their hands joined in positioning his entry. He flung his head back as she slid down his length, his jaw clenched, trying to keep from losing control.

"It's alright, Lucien." She held herself still and balanced her weight with her fingers splayed on his chest. "No need to hide from me."

He groaned with a laugh, "You're looking right at me."

When she leaned forward, his groan deepened. She understood his agony; she felt it herself. He filled her, a pulse beating between them. She found air to speak. "Not what I mean."

"You're my brave girl."

"Girl," she said with a snort and gave him a kiss.

She was there, all around him, holding him tight in every way. He wrapped his arm about her waist and cupped her bottom with his palm. They moved tentatively at first, but his hands set her pace. He kept his pelvis pressed to hers, grinding against her clit and he saw her eyes spark and brighten. Was he the first to ever do this to her? He hoped so with a primal need. There was confusion as to what was happening to her, then she didn't care, she dared to let him carry her on and up. He changed the angle of his thrusts and she began to shudder, an almost frantic fear in her gaze.

"I've got you, I've got you," he promised, as if he'd captured a fluttering butterfly in his hands.

"Lucien, I—" Fear was gone, only wonder was left. He held her as the tremors passed through her body, He was entranced at the sight of her, to see her so new and different in ecstasy, and yet so his true heart Jean.

She settled on his chest, frantically kissing his moist skin, breathing in his scent. Coming back into her body, she became aware that Lucien was still hard, buried deep in her. Now she was doubly mortified. She was a complete amatuer and couldn't even keep up her part. She scrambled off, apologising.

He followed her across the bed, laughing. "Hey, where'd you go?"

She gave him an unsure smile. "Just right here—" But she didn't come back to him.

Now she made him nervous. "Nothing to worry about. I'll just..." He glanced around the room. "That is, perhaps I can—" He waved his hand aimlessly.

Finding determination, she grabbed his fingers and tugged him over to her. "Come 'ere," she said, low and sultry in a way which countered any of his uncertainty. He happily crawled into the cradle of her legs, and she rose to meet him, peppering his neck with kisses. He grinned down at her. He could do this all night long, the sleek strength of her thighs in his hands, the drum of her heels on his backside, the curve of her breasts swinging with his thrusts. Then a jolt low in his gut, and the grief of loss, he wanted to sob like a petulant child whose toy was snatched from his greedy hands. Instead, he could only say her name over and over, poetry and platitudes gone.

She held him tightly when he tumbled down beside her. Her own body was still tingling and unbound. She could be generous, continuing to kiss his heated skin, smoothing down over his limbs. Surely now he'd sleep—

He finally caught his breath. "I think that we don't need to pack as many books for the honeymoon."

She couldn't understand how he was capable of coherent thought, let alone putting whole sentences together afterward. She obviously needed to make a greater effort to exhaust him. "What?" she mumbled.

"On the ship, I was certain that I'd get at least four novels read between Melbourne and Cape Town. But now I can see that we'll be occupied in other ways—" He nuzzled her neck and she patted his broad chest as a sort of weak agreement. "Locked up in our cabin, ordering room service in—"

"Silly man," she murmured, closing her eyes. "What will the steward think of us, old enough to be his parents, behaving in such a way?"

He laughed, and smoothed back her hair to kiss her forehead, then asked: "Jean, are you still menstruating?"

She cracked one eye open. "Excuse me?"

Lucien didn't hear the edge in her tone. "You know. Your monthlys."

"Yes, I know."

"It's just that, speaking of being parents at our age, we should do something about preventing pregnancy. I've got some Johnnies in the surgery, but it would have been better to have had you fitted for a diaphragm."

Her eyes snapped open. "Excuse me?" she repeated, the warning now a flashing red light.

Warming on the topic, Lucien didn't see his fate hanging in the balance. "The odds aren't great, but it's still a possibility of course, unless there was something which prevents it—that is, you and Christopher only had the two offspring—"

Jean went bolt upright, then swung her legs out of the bed.

It dawned on Lucien that he'd put his foot in it somehow. "Jean, darling?"

Her lovely negligee hung on the back of the bedroom door. She yanked the robe off the hanger and jerked it on.

"Jean?" Lucien leapt from the bed. She slammed the door on his face.

~ end chapter two


	3. Chapter 3

Right outside the bedroom, Jean stumbled over one of her cast off wedding shoes. Rather than picking it up, she kicked it aside, and felt a grim satisfaction for being that slack. She paused at the base of the stairs. Part of her wanted to make a furious retreat, but her bedroom wasn't upstairs anymore. Lucien had insisted that she move her things into his room in preparation for their wedding night. They'd only be here one day before leaving on their honeymoon, but he wanted to feel as though it was their room from the very first.

Going to the bathroom instead, Jean did a bit of a cleanup which only served to remind her of the topic that she was trying to ignore. She may be pregnant already. Hands shaking, she washed the tissues down the toilet. The clank of the pullchain jangled her nerves. Rising up on her toes, she examined herself in the mirror over the sink. Red patches on her breasts and neck; beard burns. Her lips swollen from kissing. She snapped her gown shut. She was too old for this. Being a wife didn't mean lazing about in bed, making love all day. Lucien should know that—but how would he? What did he know of the work of marriage?

During the wait for the arrangements for Mei Lin and Li to be put in place, Mei Lin had stayed in the bedroom beside Jean's. While Lucien had found many things with which to remain incredibly busy, the two women had spent a great deal of time together. The oddness of the situation didn't escape Jean.

"We're two different people now," Mei Lin had explained while they shared tea in the garden. "It's not even the war. Frankly, that's all which links us now."

"I'm just so very sorry," Jean murmured.

"Don't be. It's nothing that you've done. Or Lucien, for that matter." In her quiet manner, Mei Lin drank her tea and gazed slowly at the lush flowerbeds. "I could never live in this place, or be some small town doctor's wife—"

Jean protested: "It can be quite nice—"

Mei Lin just shook her head. "No. Not for me. By marrying me, Lucien knew that he wouldn't have to return. I was his convenient excuse." She gave one of her lovely smiles. "He never would have brought me or our children here to face this scorn—"

"He would have defended you—"

"But why live where you must be defended?"

Jean had no answer. Instead, she took the teapot inside to be refilled and to give herself a breather.

When she returned, Mei Lin held out her cup for it to be topped off. Jean poured automatically.

"My father was a prominent Singapore businessman. His house was full of servants. I did nothing for myself as a girl. I wouldn't have known how to make my own tea. Even after our marriage, our house had a staff enough that I only had to put my cup out like that—" She sipped. "I was the wife of a military officer, not a country doctor. My obligations and entertainments were very different than what would be expected of me here."

"But surely love overcomes that," Jean protested.

"The strength of love is vastly overrated." Mei Lin's cup clanked against the saucer. "It's fragile. Ours shattered, was beaten and broken. You would not try to glue this cup back together if I dropped it. Even if you did, you would always know where the cracks were. You'd not use it again, would you?"

Jean could only shake her head. "I'm so sorry," she repeated.

The two women ate small sandwiches in silence, then Mei Lin spoke again: "I get up every morning and my first thought is, will I kill myself today?"

Jean started in shock. "No!" she cried out but Mei Lin ignored her distress. She was in her own place.

"So far, I've said no. But everything I do is an effort." She took Jean's hand lightly, barely a touch at all. "When Lucien opened his door, I almost didn't know him. The face was the same, but his eyes...That was not my wicked boy, my dashing officer, my lover...it was a stranger, and yet it was familiar. The next time I looked in the mirror, I saw the same eyes." The grip tightened on Jean's fingers. "I can't help him, Jean. I need to take care of myself. There's nothing left for him. And bless him, he can't take care of me. To look into my eyes everyday, it would kill him eventually.

"The woman I was then was for that life. He is his full dress uniform and me in a satin bias cut gown. The cocktails flowing. The gay parties, the lovely wife always laughing—I haven't truly laughed since before the war. I'm not angry about it, I'm not sad, I just am. Perhaps we could have fallen in love with these new selves, but he was already in love with you. He's a very loyal man, I assume that you've come to see."

Choking on her words, Jean said, "I keep saying that I'm sorry. But I can't think of anything else to say. I've held his loyalty to you with such regard all these years. Of course I would step aside for it when you returned. And now it turns out I'm the only one who felt that she was being unfaithful to that marriage?"

Both women had laughed, but tears glistened in their eyes. Jean had learned what a strong woman that Mei Lin was when she could not be desueded from leaving for Hong Kong. Although Jean accepted that, she was glad they would be visiting Mei Lin and Li and her family during their wedding trip. She needed to know that they were doing well.

That flamed her anger again. How could Lucien think that Jean wouldn't accept any responsibilities that God chose for them? Although what wasn't really his question, was it? Did she _want_ a baby? Rather than answer the question, she turned away from the mirror and snapped off the bathroom light.

Jean entered the kitchen, empty but for the ice bucket with its melted ice and champagne sitting on the table. She filled a glass at the sink, drinking thirstily before putting on the kettle for a cup of tea. She heard the bedroom door open but Lucien didn't join her; he was just a shadow passing through the hall on the way to the toilet.

Lucien's first night in the house had ended with him passed out in his father's bed. The second day, he'd roamed like a great golden cat, a bottle loosely grasped in his hand, but he didn't drink in Jean's sight. Jean had forced herself to go about her usual tasks, cleaning, then some bookkeeping for the practice, before it was finally four o'clock and she could start supper. Smoothing her hands down her apron to still their shaking, she sought him out, slumped on the bench in his father's office, leafing aimlessly through medical journals.

"Did you want anything in particular?"

He looked up blearily. "What?"

"For supper."

He waved his hand. "I'll find something later."

They needed to start as they intended to go. "I am the housekeeper," Jean told him. "One of my duties is to prepare meals."

He continued to stare at her. "Don't bother."

"I'll slice some bread and cheese. There's a cold sausage in the icebox. I'll heat it up." She felt as though she were offering a scrap in her outstretched hand to that shivering dog. Just as the dog would, Lucien turned his shaggy head away.

"Come on then," she said briskly, but he remained rooted to the bench. She headed to the kitchen anyway and started preparing the simple meal, and finally heard hesitant steps following.

"Ta," he mumbled when she put the plate down before him.

"You're welcome."

She'd felt such a flush of victory in that moment but it was short-lived. He insisted on washing his own plate and fork, then had disappeared into the dim office. As she finished cleaning up, she heard the front door open then close and he was gone. When she checked the office, the scotch bottle was missing. She'd eventually gone to bed after locking the doors for the night. Her sleep was undisturbed, and in the morning, there was no sign of him anywhere. Apparently the dog wasn't housebroken yet.

She heard music coming from the studio; the phonograph had a jazz record playing. Might as well face him. She'd been childish to flee as soon as she felt that uncomfortable twist at her gut. He always found a way to tear back the curtain and blaze sunlight into her inner thoughts. Which irritated her considering how much he had lived in darkness when he'd first returned to Ballarat.

Carrying her cup of tea, she drifting into the room. Naked but for his new dressing gown, Lucien was bent at the fireplace, encouraging a fire that he'd started. He hadn't combed his hair, and the tufts of wayward curls made her fingers tingle, wanting to run through them. But she lingered in the doorway, indecisive. He glanced over his shoulder.

"Come get warm. I'll leave."

He sounded so defeated that she shook her head. "Would you like some tea?"

He sat in one of the chairs, hands on his thighs as though readying for execution. "No, thank you," he said formally. She noticed that he already had a drink; a glass of scotch was on the table beside him. So it turned out that making love to her wouldn't stop him from drinking.

She sat on the sofa at the far end from him. Nervously, she sipped her tea and extended her feet to warm them on the fire. Out of bed away from his toasty body, she was cold.

"I was out of order—"

"I suppose we should have talked about this before the wedding—"

They spoke over each other. She allowed him to go first.

"I'm a doctor. I should have thought about this before...but honestly—" He flashed that wicked dimpled smile of his. "Ever since you accepted my proposal, I've been more focused on the act and not the consequences."

She tried to keep from smiling back and failed. He oozed out of his chair to sit on the other end of the sofa. She stopped his progress by saying: "Really? I wouldn't have known."

He was astonished.

"I thought perhaps you'd gone off me," she admitted.

"How could you—"

Visions of Mei Lin in her lovely gowns, her tall, handsome husband in his dress whites, strolling in gardens of tropical blooms under a summer moon like a couple in _South Pacific_. Instead of Jean cooking supper in her housecoat, scolding Lucien to come away from his work, to wash his hands and sit down to corned beef and mash. How could she ever compare?

When he took her hand, she was startled to realise that somehow he had moved to right beside her.

She raised her chin defiantly. "I assumed I'd at least get a quick kiss and a cuddle when I came by the house. But nothing." She didn't like the edge in her tone when she said this.

Though he just held her hand, he stroked the inside her wrist with his thumb. "If I started, I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop," he said, his voice deep.

She shrugged. "Everyone thought that we were doing this for years. Might as well have enjoyed ourselves."

Seeing the dawning on his face of what he could have had, forming a thought bubble over his head with _bloody hell_ in block letters, gave her great satisfaction. Then his eyes narrowed as though she'd somehow challenged him to a dare.

His mouth was at her ear, the heat of his body searing her from shoulder to elbow. "Earlier, I didn't tell you what effect that you had on me."

"You liked my bum if I remember," she said, fighting to resist his pull.

"It had been so long since I'd been in the company of a lady," he said. "There were the years of the war with no women at all, then afterward...I was working. The women I'd been around weren't anything like you."

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, but was unbent.

"You were—are so overwhelming feminine. You smell of violets, you hum love songs under your breath, the swish of your slip under your skirt, watching you polish your nails in the evening, the moist air in the bathroom after you've bathed..."

"I never would have guessed," she said, stunned.

"I didn't want to embarrass you...or myself."

They both had suffered their pride for four years, she conceded. "That's a consideration," she mused. "What would people say if we came up pregnant! The way they talk about us now; I can't even imagine."

"Damn what people say," he grumbled. But he jumped on her remark. "So it's a possibility? I was afraid that I'd reminded you of some loss—"

She stopped him with: "I don't want to be one of your cases to solve, Lucien. The question was just a shock, that was all."

He held up his hands. "Understood."

After a moment though, she haltingly told her what had happened. "I married Christopher as soon as I left school, and fell pregnant on my wedding night, of all things. I thought I'd have the large family that seemed to be the lot of the other farmers' wives. Only town women could afford to do anything about it. Even though I didn't relish that sort of burden, I would have wanted at least one daughter, as much as I adore my boys."

"I loved watching you with Mattie," he said out of the dimness and she squeezed his fingers.

"But things...well, things happened. I had a tough time with Jack's birth...There were stitches and such," she said quickly. Even though Lucien was a doctor, he wasn't her doctor, and she didn't want him regarding her like a patient. "He was a colicky baby; I don't think I slept for a year. Christopher Senior was understanding, and we found other ways to...entertain ourselves." Now she was blushing furiously but she could feel Lucien smiling at her.

"Then the crops started to fail. We grew cabbages, turnips, beetroot at the time. Terrible root maggots swept through the area. Nothing could get rid of them. We nearly lost the farm. Christopher had to travel, finding work wherever he could. I went to work as well, cleaning house, cooking. Danny's mum Trisha could look after my boys along with her own. It was tough times. Christopher was away for months on end, and no more babies from the few times we were together.

"We finally had enough money to try and start anew with canola and lettuce, some beef cattle. But that meant laying out for new equipment, seed. Things were tight." She raised her chin, the assault on her pride still stinging after all these years.

"Oh, my love—"

She had started; she'd keep going. "I had a pregnancy and lost it, then another. I was worried enough to see Dr Blake. He told me that I wasn't getting enough nutrition, that I wouldn't hold a pregnancy. Then the war came. And that was that."

Lucien had put his arm around her shoulders, gripping her tightly. She hadn't noticed. He pressed his lips to her temple. "I'm so very sorry."

"What's done is done."

"Not for that. For never having asked about how you ended up...in these circumstances. The debt, losing the farm—" He was utterly sickened to think of Jean malnourished.

She rested her hand on his thigh. "What about you? Had you and Mei Lin wanted more?"

"Like you, the first pregnancy came quickly. But Mei Lin also had difficulties after Li's birth. We'd thought she was pregnant again when Singapore fell...I'm such a coward."

"Why so?"

"The whole time that she was here, I meant to ask...But she'd gone through so much. Had so much pain. I just couldn't hurt her again."

Remembering how astutely Mei Lin had known his motives, she gave his leg a squeeze. "I'd think that you'd want a son?" she said cautiously.

He laughed, but it was a harsh sound. "I'd have liked to be a father to my daughter, to be there for her first day of school, her first dance, to give her away at her marriage. All I've been is the bull in the breeding shed."

Shocked at his anger, she still leaned into him, understanding it.

He pulled her closer. "I will defer to you. If you want to let nature take its course, then so be it. But I won't ask for anything that you don't want—"

Of course he wouldn't. As far as they'd come, she still sensed that wild dog, shying away from her touch. She wrapped her arm across his belly and pulled him tight to her.

"Carol Marchant and her change of life baby," she said. "Ten years after the last of her first eight. She and Fred don't seem to know what to do with him. She tells me how Brian tires her out—"

"But look at Julia and Hank Spector. They're thrilled at their surprise baby after all those years married—" He chuckled in her ear. "Every chap gives Hank guff in the pub about finally throwing a triple twenty."

Jean rolled her eyes. "She dresses Sam like a little prince, treats him like her baby doll. I wouldn't want that—" Then she remembered the pictures of a young Lucien Blake in all his ridiculous velvet suits and patent leather boots and decided to stop there.

Lucien stroked the fine hairs at her temple and fell silent as well. He didn't give voice to the other stories he knew. The Childs' change of life mongoloid baby, sent off to live the rest of his life in a home. The other women who'd begged him end their pregnancies, that one more baby which couldn't be afforded or cared for. And why didn't he mention this? Instead, he said: "So you're off the idea?"

She couldn't tell if he was relieved or disappointed. Knowing Lucien, he probably felt both emotions. She lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. "I'll need to think about it some more."

He kissed her neck lightly. "You don't have to make up your mind right this minute. We can just...how did you say it? Entertain ourselves for the time being. We can always pick up some preventative measures in Melbourne before leaving for our honeymoon."

She pursed her mouth in mock outrage. "You do seem to have a one track mind."

"I am a bridegroom who's been married for—" He squinted at the clock. "For not even twelve hours. You bet I've got one thing on my mind."

She noticed something missing from the picture shelf over the fireplace. "Lucien! Where's the portrait of Agnes?"

He rose to fuss with the fire without answering.

"You finally gave it to Patrick? But why—"

"I was going through more paperwork of father's," he said, his back still to her. "I found his bank book from the time of the painting's purchase by Patrick's father. Only there was no deposit. I asked Patrick for a cancelled cheque to prove that it had been paid for. He couldn't produce it."

"I thought that he'd given in a bit too easily over the painting remaining with you."

"He believed that I'd treat him with more respect if he seemed to be manamous."

"But...you didn't sell it to him now! He will destroy your mother's work to get at the painting he really wants."

"I asked Agnes and she agreed it would be what my mother would have done for us."

"That's how you're paying for the honeymoon?" Jean fell back in the sofa's cushions. "Oh, Lucien, we should have saved the money for something practical. The roof will need replacing soon enough—"

"My mother would have wanted us to do something special and romantic. Not pay for a new roof." He turned to face her, his hands on his hips, looking very manly and stubborn.

Jean could only shake her head. Yes, mother and son were two of a kind. Their first serious row as a couple had been about the honeymoon. He's presented her with the purchased tickets for a ocean liner to Southampton, where they'd travel to London and Edinburgh to see his old haunts, as well as visit Mattie who hadn't been able to attend the wedding. Then across the Channel to tour the continent, visiting some of his familiar places and to discover new ones. After that, to board another ship in Marseilles to go through the Suez Canal and back around to Hong Kong, saving the most emotionally fraught place for last. After getting over her shock, Jean had fought him tooth and nail. Yes, they could certainly visit Mei Lin and Li, now living with family in Hong Kong, and assure that they were settled and comfortable. But the extravagance! Who would care for his practice if they were gone for months? Cover the police surgeon duties?

He had had an answer for everything. Jean deserved the trip after a lifetime in Ballarat. He should get away and take a proper holiday. Mattie, near engaged to a London surgeon, wouldn't return to Australia any time soon and desperately wanted to see her surrogate parents. Lucien wanted Jean to meet his daughter and granddaughter. A bright young doctor from the hospital was happy to look after the general practice. And of all things, Matthew had suggested that Alice come out of the depths of the morgue to attend at the crime scenes.

Lucien was relentless. Finally realising that she was going to have to let this go, Jean had, but it had been a lead weight at the back of her mind, the great expense keeping her from truly looking forward to the trip.

But at hearing this news, she launched herself into his arms. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

"I wanted to surprise you," he said, confused.

She bit back her frustration. He'd actually made her more angry by not telling her the secret. Welcome to marriage, Lucien Blake. But before she could lecture him on this, she ran her hand across the lovely new dressing gown that was her gift to the groom. Would she ever confess that his Chinese gown always made her feel uncomfortable, as a symbol of this radically different life which could take him away from her at any time? Not likely.

She tugged the gown open. "I'm hoping that you're sated enough to give me a chance to get a look at what I've got myself into," she said, feeling quite wicked.

He grinned. "What's the show in some old bloke's body?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You're fishing for a compliment."

He laughed, but let the gown drop. The flickering fire cast shadows across his limbs and wide shoulders and frustratingly clothed his modesty. She could see a few faint scars across his chest but he didn't flinch when she traced them and followed with kisses. He had washed up in the bathroom, and smelled of sandalwood with just a tinge of his carbolic soap from work. She ran her thumbs down his spine as her lips peppered his chest. When she reached the swell of his buttocks, she took two great handfuls and squeezed, giggling at his growl. She felt the twitch of his rising erection against her belly.

"Lucien," she gasped. "When will you run out of steam?"

He took at that as an invitation and slid his hands under her satin gown to do his own exploration. "It's been a very long time," he confessed. "The boiler is full to bursting."

A question that had been on her mind: "A _very_ long time?"

He cupped her face and kissed the corner of her mouth. "No, I didn't sleep with Joy."

She dropped her gaze. "It's not my business—"

"But you wanted to know?"

Her fingertips made swirling patterns on his flanks but she didn't reply to his questioning tone.

He should let it drop... "She did offer."

"And you told Patrick that you wanted to in front of everyone at the Colonial Club." Jean moved back to the couch and pulled her gown tightly closed.

Still naked, he came to kneel before her. "Yes, I did. But every time I considered going to Melbourne, really doing it, I found myself asking, what would Jean think of me?"

"I had no claims to you." Keeping her gaze steadfastly on anything but his imploring face, she stared at the artist's jointed figure model on the shelf. It seemed to be dancing with happiness.

"Yes, you did. Even though neither of us quite knew what to do about it."

Tears shimmered in her eyes. "I just wanted you to be happy. If being with her had made you happy—"

"It just would have been sex, Jean. Just sex."

"Plenty of men can be a good husband and have sex with other women." She wasn't sure what she was asking but it felt very important.

"Not me."

"But Mei Lin said—"

"That was before we were married. And I suppose if I'd know that she'd slept with my friend, I may not have pursued her. Those sort of things will tend to end in messes...Which it did."

She hated seeing the self-loathing on his face. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled him into a kiss. He seemed to take that as a signal that the conversation was over and swept her gown open. Pulling free from her mouth, he started kissing down her body, ignoring her grumble of displeasure at the loss of the kiss. He supported his weight over her as he eased her back to recline. Seeing the abrasions on her skin from his beard, he stayed whisper-soft, his tongue lapping at the burns, palming her breasts as lightly as soap bubbles.

He was killing her. She arched off the cushions, moaning with agony, her fingers tugging at his short hair ineffectually. Her pelvis found purchase on his belly and she rolled against the solid surface.

Seeming to ignore her need, he kept moving down her body. His tongue slipped around her belly button as his fingertips tickled at the backs of her knees. She giggled and gasped and grumbled at him.

"No worries," he mumbled, nipping at her hipbone. "I've got this."

His bloody arrogance—she slapped his arm. But then he raised her leg and draped it over his shoulder, and she felt a cool rush of air before his head descended between her legs. Giving a yelp of shock, she wiggled away.

He rocked back on his heels. "I'm sorry—you haven't—"

She pushed her curls off her flushed face. "No, really, I was just...surprised," she said lamely. She had a vague idea of what he planned to do, but Christopher had never been that...entertaining.

His palms stroked at her thighs. She hadn't closed her legs. "Do you trust me?" he asked, his voice husky. He leaned in to kiss her gently, and she could feel that he was trembling with need.

"Of course." She patted his cheek awkwardly.

"I want to make you feel...good."

She rushed to say, "You do! You don't have to—" She waved her hand in the general direction of her lower half.

He returned to kissing her body, first along her collarbone, then to suckle her breasts. Catching his breath as he moved to one from the other, he told her, "But I want to."

Still stiff, she leaned back into the pillows. "Alright," she said, sounding a bit too bright. "If you insist." She was very grateful that she'd taken the chance to wash up.

His laugh was muffled on her belly. He carefully placed her leg back over his shoulder but this time started kissing her inner thighs, soft and slow. She forced herself to breathe in and out deeply, to the point that her head swam. The gold flecks on the ceiling started to slowly rotate and sparkle like stars. The first pass of his tongue was so light she wasn't sure if he'd really done it or it was her imagination. She grabbed one of his hands and clung to it as his lips found their target and he suckled, first gentle, then with more vigor, until her breaths became vocal. She chanted his name because she had no idea what to say.

"I'm right here," he gasped against her leg, panting himself. Before she could come back to her body, his fingers joined the exploration, and he slipped one, then another into her heat. Her head slammed back on the cushion and her hips rose to meet his caresses. Through her blurred vision, she saw the flash of his triumphant grin in the dimness, but before she could rebuke him, his head dipped back down. She was now swollen and tender, and all he had to do was give another pass with his tongue and she was undone.

Her heel drummed on his back, and she called his name again, this time a shout of joy. Her limbs jolted, then were alight, the fire's flames reflected on her sweaty skin. She collapsed, loose and sated. She could finally speak. "Lucien..."

His head rested on her thigh and he nosed against her hip. "Mmmm?"

"That was..." She had to find the right word...What was the right word?

"Entertaining?"

She tried to slap his shoulder but had no strength so it was a friendly pat. He grinned at her again.

"Ah, my knees," he groaned as he pushed himself up to stand.

She gazed up his sturdy body, dappled with firelight, to meet his gaze. "I could—" Reaching out lazily, she traced her fingertips along his hip's red scar and this time he didn't flinch. Swinging around to sit upright, she came face to face with his own urgent need. She gripped his length firmly until his head snapped back, sliding her fist up and down just slowly enough to make him groan. She knew men enjoyed this sort of thing, but the glisten of moisture at the tip reminded her of whispered conversations that women had, adding only vague, frightening tidbits to her frustratingly limited amount of sexual knowledge. Still, she was game for whatever Lucien wanted. "Or..." She licked her lips, being unknowingly provocative.

He gasped out, "I couldn't ask—" as she continued her caresses.

"Lucien," she scolded and glared up at him. He looked down at her, his fingertips ghosting along her cheekbones. She saw what he wanted. His gaze wasn't lustful, but held wistful yearning.

Leaning back in the couch cushions, she opened her arms and he came to her. Her legs went around his waist, pulling him deep. Eager, his arousal tight strung, he thrust with frantic strokes. He began to shudder, his strong limbs twitching. She was learning his responses now and she clung to him, ready to ride through his release.

He panted, "Jean, I can't—" He tried to slide free from her.

"Don't," she demanded breathlessly, "I want this," holding him tight as waves passed through his body.

When he collapsed beside her on the couch, he whispered, "Me too. I want one too."

Nestled securely between Lucien and the couch cushions, she laced her fingers with his before laying their twined hands on her lower belly. The fire had burned down to embers, and their bodies were bathed red. The stars were only faint pinpricks of light in the blackness above them. But she felt bright and glowing with the possibilities of their future. A child may not happen, but for both of them, hope was a risk that they were willing to take.

He nudged her. She glanced over and he was grinning at her. She tipped her forehead to press against his and smiled back. The ceremony had been half a day ago, but she felt as though their vows had just been blessed.

~ end Chapter 3


	4. Chapter 4

"There you go," the ambulance driver said with false cheer as he settled Thomas in his bed. Thomas thanked him with great dignity.

From the doorway, Lucien observed it all, his arms tightly folded. He could hear the housekeeper clanking around in the kitchen, supposedly making tea but he'd seen the way tears formed in her eyes as soon as she watched her employer being carried into his home on a stretcher.

 _Employer_ —something more was going on there, Lucien thought with distaste. Another complication to be dealt with when his father—to be dealt with later. Clearing out the house would mean moving her along too, and if she felt that she had some claim to the estate...He took a deep breath. He wasn't ready to deal with overflowing female emotions.

"If there's anything you'll be needing, Doc, just ring us up. We'll take care of you," the ambo said as a parting to his father, while giving Lucien an outraged look.

Only in a town a few days, and he already had a reputation, Lucien thought ruefully.

After seeing the ambos out, he returned to the bedroom. "How is that, Father?" he said heartily.

"Well as can be expected," Thomas replied, but his voice was weak.

Lucien smelled her before she was there at his elbow; a warm summer garden. "Tea is ready, Doctor," Jean said, ignoring Lucien.

Thomas visibly brightened, struggling to pull himself up in the bed. Jean brushed past Lucien to assist him, pushing a pillow in behind his back.

"A slice of your wonderful banana cake?" Thomas asked hopefully. "With lots of butter?"

"No," Jean said regretfully, "your doctor sent along a list of acceptable dishes. I've made a date loaf."

"Bother," grumbled Thomas.

"He can have a bit of butter on his slice," Lucien told her.

She tossed back her head and glared at him. "The instructions said no fat—"

He leaned close. "Yes, he can," Lucien said quietly.

She met his gaze, then dropped hers. He saw the tears shining in her eyes again. "Let me get your tray," she said quietly.

Jean sat with Thomas, which meant Lucien could have his own slice of well-buttered date loaf and tea in peace. Only to have the front doorbell ring just as he was tucking in. He was nearly to the door when Jean popped out of his father's room, reaching for the knob as well.

"I'll get that," she said firmly.

He ignored her and opened the door to reveal a young district nurse, her bright face shining from under her woollen grey beret.

"Hello there," the girl said easily, "I'm Mattie O'Brien. Here to look in on Dr Blake?"

"That won't be necessary," Lucien said with an imperious air, looking her over. "I'm also a doctor and can tend to my father."

Mattie didn't back away. Her smile remained in place. "In my experience, there's duties that doctors would prefer that nurses do."

"In your experience—" Lucien squinted at her. "How old are you? Twenty?"

"I just turned twenty-one." The smile remained but her gaze turned flinty.

Twenty-one. Li would be twenty-one. Lucien's cheek twitched. He had no idea what his daughter would look like. Then Jean grasped his arm and pulled him aside.

"Mattie! Please come in!" she said loudly.

Thomas heard her, and called out a welcome as well. Lucien was effectively overruled. His family name was on the brass plate outside, but it was obvious that he was not in charge.

He had retreated to the kitchen and brooded over his date loaf and cool tea. It had been the beginning of a new sort of life for him, with women's expectations to be considered. It did turn out that Jean had claim on this house, but not in the way that he'd thought.

On a much more base level, the memory of Jean's fine baking was making his stomach growl. The fire was down to cherry red coals and Jean curled closely to his chest, her arm tightening across his belly. Their dressing gowns did little to fend off the chill.

"What's that?" she murmured, tapping his tummy.

"Hungry," he confessed.

She slowly blinked like a waking cat. "Surely not again," she said, pushing her curls off her forehead. "We'll have to report you to the uni in Melbourne for a study, I swear."

He gave her bum a soft swat. "Goose," he said affectionately. "If you must know, I was thinking of your amazing date loaf. I don't suppose you have any—"

She sat upright, clutching her gown closed. "With everything else going on, you actually expected me to have baked?"

Devoid of her warmth, he groped for his own gown's belt and tied it. "Of course not," he said quickly.

She stood. "Well, I did. I couldn't leave Charlie here with nothing to eat."

Pattering off to the kitchen with Lucien in pursuit, Jean hid her smile from him. She turned though, and putting her hand on his chest, she made a demand: "But promise me that after this midnight snack, we'll go to bed. Sleep," she said definitely.

He flicked on the light. "Of course," he said but she thought he seemed evasive.

The kettle bubbled as she took the cake from its tin. "I can't believe you're hungry after all the food at the wedding supper."

"I didn't see you eating much," he chided. "Too busy making sure that everyone else was having a good time." To make his point, he pulled out a chair for her and gently pushed her down into it.

After taking down the cups, he shook tea leaves into the earthenware pot and fetched butter from the icebox for their cake along with the milk jug. Jean watched him with affection. She liked him being domestic.

Date loaf...Mattie had loved it..."I'll be so glad to see Mattie on our trip," she said, "I miss her so much."

He sat beside her. "I do too. And I loved watching the two of you together." For a time, he'd lived with a mother and daughter, and had been grateful.

She actually blushed. "What?" he asked, curious.

Dipping her head, she sipped her tea and avoided his gaze. "I—I'm embarrassed to say."

"There's not much to be embarrassed about after the past few hours," he said wickedly.

It worked as he intended. Her cheeks flamed redder and she gasped, "Lucien!"

"Tell me."

Her cup clanked as she placed it a bit too firmly back on the saucer. "I...I was jealous of Mattie."

"How well she got on with my father?"

"No..." She recalled those days as Thomas was dying so clearly. The young nurse had been a godsend, taking care of delicate necessities that Thomas never would have wanted Jean to perform. Jean had known Mattie from church and a few other social occasions, and quickly found her a wonderful companion, easing the pain of that difficult time.

But Mattie was also the source of unexpected and painful emotions that Jean hadn't even been able to define at the time. Lucien Blake was the son of her employer and thus should be served and treated with civility, but he aggravated and unsettled her. What she should not have been doing was harrumphing and narrowing her eyes every time he was near Mattie.

Around Jean, Lucien was distant and terse but with Mattie, he dipped his shaggy head like a shy puppy every time she addressed him. He gazed at her with utter adoration. He rushed outside to fetch the afternoon paper for her to read with her tea. He fiddled with the radio to find just the right music for her to enjoy while filling in her notebook. Jean seethed. So unseemly. A man old enough to be her father—well, wasn't that just like a bloke?

Thomas had seen her watching Lucien and Mattie playing croquet in the backyard from the windows. When the young woman laughed, Lucien joined her, his deep chuckles melding perfectly with her light tones. Jean snapped the curtains shut sharply.

"I hope that Lucien's not too upset when she's done with this job and goes off," Thomas said.

"Lucien, upset?" Jean said with a huff. She bit back a few other things that she immediately thought, about dirty old men and pretty young lasses, and nurses and doctors, and men abusing their power, and really, shouldn't Thomas Blake's son be above such behaviour? Not that it was her business, and not that she really cared, but Mattie O'Brien had her own reputation to worry about and he wouldn't consider such things, would he, with his drinking and sleeping in the shrubs and wearing dirty togs—

"Mattie must remind him of his daughter. She's about the right age."

Jean spun around. "Lucien has a family?" Why hadn't this occurred to her? And why did her stomach drop?

Thomas had gone pale. He pressed his fingers to his quivering lips. "I've failed him—them."

She hurried to sit beside Thomas on the couch. He'd seemed to have shrunk over the past few weeks and she fit easily on the cushion. She picked up his hand. "Don't fret so, Doctor."

"I do nothing but fret these days." He leaned back into the pillows. "So much yet to do, but I just don't have the strength."

"Doctor Blake..."

"My son married a...an Oriental lady while in Singapore. Of course, she was unsuitable to live in Ballarat, be mistress of this house, and I'm afraid that I made a bit of a fuss."

For the first time since she'd come to work for Thomas, Jean thought less of him. She turned away and watched the figures out in the garden through the sheer curtains.

"If I'd welcomed her into the family, perhaps she and the girl would have been here when Singapore fell. Instead, they were lost."

"Are they dead?"

"I don't dare ask but they must be." She'd never heard Thomas sound so defeated and ashamed.

"Perhaps you should now."

"Some things are best left alone." He was firm, so she did leave it. And Lucien wouldn't tell her about his family for months. Father and son were not much different in some ways.

Mattie had burst into the lounge, flushed pink from the sun and exertion, and had apologised for disturbing the patient. Thomas had only smiled sadly at her, and told her that a young person brightened up the house.

Lucien tugged Jean out of her chair and onto his lap. "Darling?" he said, wrapping his arms around her waist. "You never had anything to be jealous about. What in the world would a pretty young girl have seen in this old sod?"

She remained seated as though his lap was her chair, her back ramrod straight. "I'd been expecting that old sod to behave as old sod's do around pretty young girls," she said tartly.

He laughed and she didn't like that sparkle in his eyes. He set his chin on her shoulder, tickling her cheek with his beard. "I was being silly," she said, the martyr. "I didn't know you yet. I didn't understand."

He rocked her back to cradle her in his arms, a proper snuggle. "But if I'd known that her presence hurt you, I wouldn't have asked her to move in—"

"She had to come live with us." Jean leaned her head against his chest. His hands were everywhere on her body, gentle strokes and squeezes, but not starting anything. Just like his touch had been until she'd had to acknowledge what it was really about, and had to tell him to stop.

"To stop wagging tongues," he said, "after my father was gone, she needed to be here for your reputation—"

"And yours," Jean pointed out. "No one would have trusted their wife with a doctor who lived in sin."

He rolled his eyes.

"It was for the best, and you know it."

"Anyone who believed that of you—"

She struggled free from his grasp to stand and lean against the bench. "Oh?"

Chilled by the loss of her body, he sensed he'd trod on delicate ground. "You're the most honourable woman I know," he said carefully.

"I would never, right?" The challenge was there.

He furrowed his brow. The minefield was clearly marked, but where lay the bombs? "You...wouldn't?"

She met his questioning gaze. The first night that he would sleep in the house, two doors down from her bedroom in his childhood bed, she'd not locked her door because she wouldn't show him fear. But she remained half awake, stirring at every creak of the old house, every rattle of a window sash. She'd gone bolt upright at sudden cries piercing the night, not words but guttural sounds. At her door, pulling her gown on over her nightdress, she could tell it was coming from Lucien's room. He must not disturb Thomas. Thinking of nothing else, she rapped on his door.

When he didn't stop yelling, she opened the door and strode through, deciding an air of authority was necessary. Caught in some frightful nightmare, Lucien thrashed on the narrow bed, tangled in the sheet. Her instincts kicked in and she started to pull the sheet free, as if straightening up the bed of one of her sons. His flailing arms found hers and he pulled her down to his chest.

This wasn't a boy though. He was naked and sheened with sweat, she realised in horror. His mouth settled on her neck where the pulse jumped with shock. He stopped crying out but

each gasping breath was like a grazing kiss to her throat.

Managing to pull him up so she could sit on the edge of the mattress, she tried roust him. "Doctor...Lucien..." In the dark room, his eyes shone up at her glazed and unfocused. His hand gripped her arm tightly, as though he was a drowning man going down. His heavy head settled on her breasts, pushing aside the loose neck of her satin nightdress, and his moist breathing was on her collarbone. It had been so long since she'd been this close and intimate with a man, and for a brief moment, it seemed so easy to allow him to pull her back down on the mattress—this could not continue.

"Lucien." Her tone was sharp.

He didn't reply, but his breathing hitched. She eased up to her feet and extracted herself from his grasp. He fell to the bed with a sigh of relief. She hurried to the doorway but dared to glance back. She wasn't certain, but thought that she saw the glint of his eyes, watching her. She latched the door as quietly as possible.

He never spoke of the incident, nor did she mention it either. The next day, he did tell her that he would start sleeping on a bed in his father's room to offer any assistance. She had agreed that it was a very good idea. She switched to a much more sensible nightdress and gown, and the few times she said him in his nightclothes, he was fully covered as well. Later, he moved into his father's room, and he firmly told everyone to ignore his night terrors. She would lie in the dark, listening to his muffled screams, and grip the edge of her mattress to keep from going to him.

Lucien probed again. "You said that I wasn't the sort of bloke that you'd be interested in—"

She smoothed her satin gown's sleeve, avoiding his gaze. "I said that I wouldn't have married you."

Lucien didn't know why he was arguing this point, but it was all suddenly important. "Surely you wouldn't have—I mean, a respectable widowed housekeeper—"

Her gaze turned sharp. "Really. Not the sort, right?" she said.

He stepped right on that landmine. "Of course not!"

"Not some lovely modern girl, the sort that men try it on with." She turned away, grabbing the kettle from the stove.

"Lovely, yes. Try it on...No?" he said slowly. He really couldn't see a way of out of this.

She was at the sink, adding water to the kettle. "No, I'm the sort who has to wait around for a man to come calling, hope for the best—" The kettle clanked loudly on the hob's burner. The gas lit with a whoosh.

"You could have had any man," he insisted, fighting his confusion with determination. "I was just lucky that you waited around on this particular man."

She collapsed in a chair at the other end of the table from him and smoothed back her hair. She didn't look at him. Yes, men had tried it on, from husbands of families that she'd worked for before the Blakes to shopkeepers assuming she was up for it. Even Patrick Tyneman; she could never tell Lucien of that unpleasant encounter! Other men had assumed that she was desperate enough to overlook their flaws for the chance to remarry. Still others had thought she was already taken. Social functions spent with the wallflowers, but for the dances in Lucien's arms, while the partygoers watched their every turn. Men who'd chat her up, only to glance Lucien's way as if needing his permission. Then those rare souls who'd dared to breach the doorway, but then having to brave her employer's intense glare. And now Lucien seemed incredulous that she'd 'waited' for him? For such a brilliant man, he could be obtuse sometimes.

The kettle screamed.

"Jean?"

"Let me get us more tea." She kept her back to him as she fussed with the teapot and kettle.

He had a flash of anger. He'd been frozen for so long, afraid to reach out to her, afraid of releasing his tumultuous emotions. Their fragile glass world within this house could be shattered and lost forever if he had handled it too roughly. He simply couldn't lose what little peace that he'd found there. But if she'd given him any encouragement...would he have been able to control himself? A tremor ran through his limbs. The stiff set to her shoulders and jerky movements in her mundane tasks were very familiar and he calmed.

His father's dying breaths and she was the one weeping. A woman crying...He knew what he was supposed to do, but Lucien could only stand with his back to the wall and watch Jean's hunched shoulders shake. Mattie was mercifully there to gather Jean to her arms when her nursing skills were no longer needed. Then Jean was the widow at the funeral, all in black, three steps behind the coffin. It was so much easier to carry the burden of the coffin on his shoulder than give her the support she needed.

Instead, he'd travelled to Melbourne, bought a few drinks in the right sort of pub, and had gone home with a woman who held up no such barriers. Angie? Annie? She'd understood what the evening was about, and responded eagerly. Lucien had thought that he could simply blow off some steam before settling into a close living arrangement with an attractive woman, only to exacerbate the situation when it was her face that he saw as he thrust mindlessly into this woman's body. He'd been sickened as he always was when he sought release this way. The times before, he'd felt unfaithful to Mei Lin, this time, it was to a woman who he'd only known a few weeks. The swarm of undefinable emotions clouded his thoughts for much too long. Marriage was supposed to have freed him. He stood quickly, knocking his chair back.

"I think that I need a drink." He was gone before she could say anything.

He carefully poured just a finger of whisky. He'd try cutting back rather than go cold turkey. When she touched his back, he barely flinched. He knew how difficult it would be for her to follow and reach out to him. Covering her hand with his, he downed his drink.

"Do you need that?"

"You want me to sleep, don't you?" His tone was harsher than he expected.

She stepped away.

He set the crystal glass down carefully as to not break it. He was still too rough and it banged on the tabletop.

He had thought that he'd go mad sitting with his father, doing what little that he could to ease the suffering of a dying man. He considered clearing away any barriers between them, but every time that he started to speak, the words lodged in his throat like dry bread. Nor did his father seem ready to talk, and he used that as his excuse.

When the doorbell had rung, it was so loud he started in his chair. "I'll get that," he said unnecessarily to his father who was dozing.

The elderly lady at the door looked familiar, but she was the first to say something. "Lucien," she gasped, "I'd heard that you were in town."

"Mrs Clasby," he said and before he could stop her, she was hugging him, right there in the entry. No one had touched him with affection since before the war. The last hugs from Mei Lin and Li before they'd gotten on the boat which was supposed to carry them to safety. He disentangled himself with care, for the old lady was frail. "It's so good to see you," he added formally.

She tugged his beard. "All grown up, I see."

For the first time, he was embarrassed with his appearance. "Been working in a mining town," he said gruffly, "no need to spruce myself up."

Giving him a gentle smile, she squeezed his arm. "I'm sure you're still a handsome boy under all that fuzz."

"Nell, is that you?" Thomas was calling from his room, his voice stronger than it had been in days. His old friend joined him and Lucien fled to the kitchen to prepare tea with shaking hands. He brought it into the over-warm, stuffy bedroom and forced himself to stay, even if it was stand with his back pressed to the wall.

He didn't like Nell's colour though, and the shake to her hand. When Thomas could no longer stay awake and she rose to leave, Lucien herded her to the exam room.

"Mrs Clasby, I'd like to check your blood pressure—"

"Please, call me Nell."

"Nell, when's the last time that you were examined?"

"Your father hasn't been up to seeing patients for a few weeks now, and I'm not comfortable with the other doctors in town."

He held out a chair for her. "Please, have a seat. I'll just be a moment."

He hurried to the small sink in the exam room and scrubbed his hands thoroughly. He found a lab coat hanging on a hook and pulled it on over his faded canvas shirt. It was snug, but would serve its purpose.

With great care, he took Nell's vitals and checked it against her records that he'd managed to find in the filing cabinet. He wasn't at all pleased with her blood pressure and told her so. "I'd like to change your prescription. My father set the dosage six months ago."

Nell folded her hands on her lap. "I trust you."

He glanced up from the notes that he'd been making. "That is, I'm not trying to step on his toes—"

"Someone will need to take over," Nell said with the placid certainty of the elderly. "You're the best person."

Lucien stood abruptly. He was back in the sweat box, bent in half, blind but for the welding flame of light that came through cracks between the boards, time recorded by scratches made with his thumbnail. His breathing became rapid but Nell didn't seem to notice. Her smile calmed him.

"Yes, Nell," he said. "You may be right."

Jean had been in the doorway, and he'd just noticed. "Did you need any assistance, Doctor Blake?" she asked.

He started to correct her, but then looked down at his lab coat. "I think I'm finished," he said, suddenly exhausted. But he'd added, "I suppose I can see any patients who call for an appointment," before wandering out of the office to curl up on the sofa for a nap.

He was just as tired now. He couldn't hold off sleep anymore. His hand slid from the whisky decanter. He hadn't noticed that he'd been reaching for it. He glanced over to Jean, curled on the sofa, sipping tea and watching him.

He let his hand drop. "To bed, my darling," he said softly.

Putting aside her cup, she rose. She held out her hand for him to take. "Everything will seem better when you've slept," she said, relieved.

In their bedroom, Jean had to straighten the bedding before flipping it back for them. Shedding their gowns, they slid into bed and found each other in the middle. But when she ran her hands along his bare back, she could feel the tension in the muscles.

"Sleep, love," she murmured to his ear. She held him as tightly as she had wanted to that night, touched all this skin that she could reach, rubbing circled patterns and cooing low and gentle. Slowly, his body melted into hers and she kissed his temple. "That's a good boy," she murmured, mostly asleep herself and not sure what she was saying.

He'd learnt to fake sleep. Keeping his breathing slow, he pushed the dread away. It would be fine. Jean being there would keep the nightmares away, surely. He kept repeating that to himself until the only word in his mind was _Jean_ , over and over, and he drifted off.

~ end chapter 4


	5. Chapter 5

The old man doesn't have much time left. Every breath is an obvious inconvenience for him. The priest hunches over the dying man like a raven feeding on a carcass. His beads rattle around in my skull.

When he leaves, Father brings me close.

"You failed your wife. I failed my wife."

The cracks in my head widen, and the late afternoon sun burns my thoughts.

"Don't fail her when I'm gone."

It's so hard to concentrate. "Who?"

"Jean, of course, you imbecile. Your wife."

Yes, I'm married to Jean. Look around the dark bedroom. It smells of death and decay, but she's not there. Must find her—

The halls are so dark, knocking from table to walls, shaking the vases and making pictures go askew. The studio door, closed as always. It was her place, her sanctuary. Us boys weren't allowed in.

And one door opens, a feminine voice calls out, "Lucien, mon cher."

Mother needs me. The smell of paint and turps and lilac perfume. She's at the fire, a dark figure swathed in an Oriental dressing gown, shimmering silk with snakes coiled up her body. She wears red slippers—no, she stands in a puddle of red paint.

My wife turns to greet me. "Lucien, you're finally here. I've been waiting for ages."

It's her; she's finally all mine! "We can be together," she says. "I've wanted you for so long, I need your touch—" She opens the gown with a smile.

Blood courses down her chest, from where her breasts should be, flowing over her belly to flood at the apex of her thighs, and along her legs to pool at her feet.

"Is there a problem, Lucien?"

"No, nothing, no—" I can't stop babbling; it's the only thing keeping the vomit down.

"You know what the Japs do to us. You've seen it before. Why would I be different? After all, you weren't there to protect me, protect Li—"

I can only sob. "I'm sorry."

"And now you just got rid of me. Like this, I'm no use to you anymore. Jean's the one you want—"

"It's not like that, Mei Lin.."

Her smile is cold. "But you can't take care of her either." She tips her head.

Jean on the couch. Reclining, sleeping...No, twisted, ashen in death, the cyanide burning her mouth, the agony still in her eyes—

Must run, must go, can't face all this—

Hands reaching for me, grabbing, holding me back, fight, fight, fight for your life, that's all you can do—

Jean tried to stop Lucien's thrashing, She'd woken to his cries, his powerful limbs reaching for her and pushing her away at the same time. If only he'd wake—

His eyes snapped open, but his vision was blank. She tried to get his attention. "Lucien!" He grasped her and she felt all his power in one frightening instance.

She slapped him, hard. His breathing stopped in a huff, and started again like he was running. Then he was up, out of the bed, and gone from the room.

She must follow. Snatching her dressing gown from the end of the bed, she pursued him. "Lucien!" she called out again. Catching him by the front door, she yanked at his bare arm, tugging him around. He was naked and she couldn't get purchase on his sweat-sheened skin. She wrapped her arms around his middle and held him fast. His breathing was like a racehorse, thundering in her ear.

"Jean," he rasped, sounding full of wonder.

"It's fine, it'll be fine," she fiercely promised him, moving her arms to around his neck. He met her gaze. He was wide awake now but his eyes brimmed with fury and fear. "I'm not going anywhere," she said. She wasn't afraid. As long as she could touch him, she'd never be afraid.

Suddenly, he was lifting her, slamming her the short space to the wall, making her gasp with shock. Before she could say anything, his mouth was on hers, urgent in his need. She had to reassure him, her lips and tongue salving his pain. She tugged at his short hair, wild with sleep, showing him the way to return her assurances. Her gown's sash came loose and they were skin to skin, his length pressed low on her belly.

He hitched up her legs, and in one thrust, made her gasp out again—she hadn't been ready—but then a flood of arousal washed over them and she clung to his neck, her head falling to his shoulder.

"Oh my God, oh my God," she chanted, her teeth grazing the tendon tightening as his strong arms held her fast to him.

Or was she holding him? Keeping him from running out the door, never to be seen again? Holding him up so he didn't collapse like sand at her feet? She flung her head back as her power coursed through her limbs, radiating out from where she held him, he joined her—

He couldn't leave, never again. She locked her ankles behind his back, low where the muscles bunched with his exertion. He was fleeing the beasts that pursued him. She could shelter him against their attack; another shock of heat and energy struck her and now she chanted his name, calling him to her. Clawing at his head, she turned up his face to look at her again.

"I'm here, I'm here," she swore before kissing him, frantic, bruising kisses to seal her allegiance. Her body shook with another release—or had she never stopped?

His voice was pain itself. "Jean, please, please, oh God..."

Furious at whatever demon possessed him, she sank her teeth into his throat where his pulse jumped. He jerked, froze for a terrifying moment, then it was the calm of the storm. His frantic thrusts slowed. He planted one hand behind her head, leaning heavily on it, and supported her whole weight easily with the other hand cradling her bottom. His breathing was deep, brushing her breasts with his chest in the lightest and most painful caresses. His gaze pinned her down. He whispered against her lips, "I love you so much, Jean," and she came again, sobbing and clutching to his shoulders.

His release was one more cry, "Oh God," as he surged, all his muscles strong and alive in her hands. Then they were clinging to each other, leaning on the wall, weak and battered as the storm moved far off, the thunder distant.

Her every gasp was full of tears. His thumbs stroked the moisture from her cheeks. "I'm so sorry, so...sorry..." He was crying too. Pushing her away, fleeing again—

"No, Lucien!" But he only went to the lounge and collapsed on the settee. Finding her balance, Jean pulled her gown closed, and ever practical, retrieved his new cashmere gown from the bedroom to drape it over his bent back.

Tugging him close, she cradled his head against his belly. "Don't cry, my love," she murmured.

"I hurt you."

"I was the one who slapped you," she pointed out.

His brow furrowed. "Did you?"

"You were having a nightmare."

"I can't do this—" He tried to rise. "I'll leave—"

He frightened her with such talk. She pushed him back down and he fell to the cushion easily. "What are you on about?"

He hung his head. "I hurt you," he repeated.

She traced the red half-moon left by her teeth of his neck, then the scratches on his back. She quickly hitched the robe to cover the marks. Her limbs were still shaking, her skin was tingling, and she saw stars when she blinked. She felt as though she'd been at sea for days, and didn't have her land legs back yet.

"No," she said carefully. She and Christopher had always enjoyed themselves in the bedroom, but this was an entirely different sort of experience. She'd known women who'd left perfectly nice husbands for some rotter, and were heard to breathlessly say that it was because he had a way about him. Jean had just discovered what that meant, right down to the breathless part. Only her lover was no rotter. If anything, he was being a bit of a clueless clod.

Perhaps it would help to talk things out. Jean usually didn't like to discuss her feelings to death, but she would use that as a distraction for Lucien—a case for him to solve.

"It was lovely!" she barked out. "Quite."

That got his attention. He stared up at her, gaping. She pushed her hair back nervously. "Not that I know much about these sort of things. I mean, what have your other...friends said? About doing...that?" Using that word reminded her of Richard Taylor, how he'd ranted to her in the garden about men who wanted to do _that_ to women, and how disgusting and beast-like that made them, and in the moment, she knew that she did not wish to see him again.

Lucien's Adam's apple bobbed. His eyes shifted. She waited.

"I really couldn't say." He cleared his throat. "Well, right. Then that's sorted."

"Yes," she said, relieved. For once, Lucien was going to let a matter drop—

"Although I can't really promised that sort of experience every time," he made clear. "Besides, with Charlie living here, we can't be really—"

She rushed in. "No, best not—"

"Perhaps when he's on shift—" Lucien suggested, the wheels turning in his mind.

She drew his head to her chest and his palms smoothed her hips with the silk of her gown. "Silly sod," she whispered as she kissed his forehead.

He laced his fingers behind her back and took a shattering deep breath. She feared what he was going to say next. "It just doesn't look as though we can share a bed. I was worried about that, you see."

She didn't sound very convincing when she said, "Oh, it's no bother."

He only tightened his grip.

"What were you dreaming about?"

His silence stretched on. "Nothing," he finally said.

"Didn't seem like nothing."

"I can't remember most of the time, that is. Just always the same sort of thing, anyway."

"I'd been having the most anxious dreams before the wedding. Icing cakes, hundreds of them," she said, "I expect it's just been all the fuss, change, concern about the future and such."

He didn't look convinced. "I'd hoped that they'd go away now that we're married. I haven't slept with anyone since before the war—that is, well, you know what I mean."

She really didn't, but patted his shoulder nonetheless.

"There's nothing that can stop these terrible dreams?" she asked gently, but he still pulled away, leaning back in the sofa and folding his arms tightly.

"No. I could drink myself into a stupor, but I want to enjoy my time in bed with you, not be passed out, spreading my stink on you."

She remembered washing his sheets and clothing, too often spoiled with the stench of alcohol, smothering his usual delicious smell.

"And I don't want to harm you," he muttered.

She got down on her knees so that he was forced to meet her gaze and put her hands on his thighs to get his attention. This was very difficult for her. So often, they'd had their most intimate conversations without daring to look at each other; a confessional of sorts. But now they were married, and she needed to face him down.

"Then you will have your nightmares and I'm so very sorry that you're in that pain, but when you wake, I'll be there. I'll always be there."

His face constricted as he tried to maintain control. "Some husband I am. I can't even protect you from me."

She hopped up, ignoring the groan of her joints, and sat beside him on the couch. "I'll be here," she repeated, refusing to acknowledge what he'd said. Pulling his head over to rest on her shoulder, she held him close. His whole body shook as he bit back sobs, so she just hummed tunelessly.

In Thomas's last days, when he couldn't go any farther than this couch, she had sang for him because he'd always enjoyed her voice. It had soothed him, so perhaps this would work for his son.

The last time that she sang had been the first time that she'd felt sympathy for Lucien.

"Alright, Doctor, you'll have to accompany me on the piano." She was hoping that she'd show some vitality.

He'd shaken his head. "I'm comfortable right here on the settee," he'd said, a warning in his tone. "But Lucien should be able to pick out a tune on the keys." He called over his shoulder to his son, who was reading the international newspapers at the dining table. "You do remember how to play? You haven't tossed that over like you did performing surgery?"

Lucien carefully laid his paper down. "No, Father," he said blankly.

"It's fine," Jean rushed to say. "I don't need to be accompanied. Goodness knows, I usually just sing along to the radio—"

Lucien came around to the piano. His encouraging smile was something new and different to Jean and she shied a bit from it. "Do you have something in mind?" he said gently.

"I don't know. Do you have a favourite, Doctor?"

He smiled weakly. "How about S'Wonderful. It's cheerful."

"Of course." She looked at Lucien nervously. He'd sat at the piano and opened the cover. His hands rested lightly on his thighs as he waited for her.

"Do you know it?" she asked.

He nodded, then asked, "Do you need a key?"

"This is hardly the stage at the Regent."

She simply started to sing, because that's how she did things, and he matched her key and pitch within a few notes. He played easily and well, and she shot Thomas an indignant look.

Then Lucien joined her, his voice rusty-sounding at first, but they were soon exchanging verses. It reminded her of the family sing-alongs they had when she was a child and she moved to lean on the piano, smiling down at him.

"You've made my life so glamorous...You can't blame me for feeling amorous—"

He focused on the keys but she saw his beard twitch, surely with a returning smile. He took the line, "'S wonderful...'S marvelous...That you should care for me—"

When they had finished, Thomas had weakly clapped, Jean had thanked Lucien for joining her, but he had only closed the cover on the keyboard without responding. She had felt as though he was closing a door on her brief view of a different man.

Lucien seemed to be calming. His muscles relaxed under her gentle caresses. "Love you," he murmured, sounding as though he was possibly falling asleep. She smiled with triumph. She would rather they were in bed but she'd take what she had.

She plucked at his hair, which was trying to curl despite all his best efforts with a comb and Brylcreem earlier in the day. Goodness, had they only been married twelve hours? It felt a lifetime. She smoothed his scalp with her palm and the curls bounced back behind her hand.

She had been the first one to touch. With his father's funeral the next day, Lucien had gone to the shops and had returned with a serviceable black suit and white shirt. Tailoring the garments gave Jean something to distract from her heartbreak and she eagerly offered. Only to realise that meant holding the tape at the point of his shoulder and pulling it down to his bum, and around his waist...and his strong neck...she steadfastly refused to measure his inseam. "I'll just get it off your trousers," she'd announced, turning away as he fought a grin.

She'd been making quick chalk marks on the jacket for her alterations when Lucien had said, "About my hair—"

"Yes, it's a right rat's nest," she said.

"I suppose I can try for the barber's first thing tomorrow—"

She thought of him at the barber's, with all the local men sitting around, and how uncomfortable that would be for everyone. "I cut my boys' hair, my husband's, even Dr Blake's at times. I can do yours."

And that's how they found themselves at the kitchen table, Lucien with a tea towel around his neck and Jean running a comb through his thatch of wild hair. "These curls," she fussed, covering her uncertainty. "My Jack has curls and they can be a devil to cut."

"Just cut it all off," Lucien said. "I'm used to a military cut. I've just let myself go, that's all."

So she did. Somehow it brought her nearly to tears to see the golden twists fall on the floor around the chair. And the shorter his hair became, the more she had to touch his warm skin. Her fingertips stroked at his temple, along his ear, up the nape of his neck.

The kitchen was very quiet, but for the snip of the scissors and the tick of the clock.

"Thank you," he said.

"For what?"

"None of that idle chit-chat like you get from barbers."

Her back went up. "I can chit-chat."

"No, that's alright."

She decided that she was finished. She caught herself before she put a kiss on the top of his head just as she would have with Christopher or the boys. Instead, she briskly brushed the last hairs from his shoulders. "I've done the best that I can, but I think it's going to take a big dollop of hair cream to hold it down tomorrow. Perhaps it'd be best for you to see a barber...and there's the matter of your beard—"

She leaned over as though to snip that as well but he rose from the chair and held out his hand for the scissors. "I'll take care of that."

"Fine." She found the broom and swept up his hair with vicious swipes. "I best start tailoring that suit of yours."

He had been quite the sight at his father's funeral, in a well-fitted but cheaply made suit, his father's favourite black silk tie and best black shoes, his hair slicked down from a sharply combed part but with his beard still thick like that of a bushranger.

She gave his hair another ruffle. Perhaps he'd grow those curls if she asked nicely... His voice was muffled against her breast. "I didn't stay because my father asked me to look after the house...look after you."

"Dr Blake asked you to look after me? He didn't have to do that. I would have sorted myself out." But she still felt tears come to her eyes. The old man had been so generous with her all those years, giving her a position when no one in town would hire her. The situation with Jack had tainted her, as much as she'd hated to acknowledge it. Not only had Thomas Blake hired her, but he'd encouraged her to take typing and bookkeeping courses so she could assume the role of his receptionist. And he'd allowed her to finally read those books which had fascinated her so many years ago. It was when he saw her interest in films and theatre, he'd suggested that she try out for the local theatre troupe.

With his death, all that had been torn away. Danny had come around to let her know that she could move in with his parents and their two daughters who were still at home. Her older brother, then another, had rung up with the same offer. With each one, the same vision came to mind. Always being a guest, never finding a real home. Although her house was long gone, owned by the Dempsters. She had dared to feel some sense of home here, but Dr Blake's death showed her how tenuous that was, with her fate now in the hands of his unstable son.

"Yes, I think he was appealing to my sense of chivalry. The town needed me, his patients needed me, and his housekeeper, that poor little widow, needed me." His voice was regaining its strength and he chuckled. "I didn't want to cause him more distress, so I said I would stay."

"But you didn't just say it to comfort a dying man. You did stay."

"I did it for the money," Lucien admitted. "I had been earning well enough at the mine clinic, but his practice, the police surgeon position, brought me enough money to hire Mr Kim, the investigator who was searching for Mei Lin and Li."

"Good! That's the man I love."

He peered up at her.

She planted a kiss on his nose and gave him a small smile. "You did anything that you had to do to find your family. Even tolerate this judgmental housekeeper and Ballarat's townspeople snubbing you at every turn."

"You weren't judgmental," he protested.

"Let's get you into this gown," she suddenly announced, standing and pulling him to his feet. He groaned and grumbled, but obediently held out his arms for her to tug the sleeves up his arms. Settling in the corner of the couch, he brought her down to snuggle into the cradle of his legs. "That's better," he said, his fingers weaving through her hair to caress her scalp.

She liked this a great deal. She mirrored his intimacy, sliding her hands inside his robe. There was still so much to explore on her groom. His body was solid, but his skin wonderfully sleek under her palms, like petting a well-groomed cat. "I was," she conceded.

"I was just different," he said soothingly. "That feral dog."

"You did finally clean up,' she said reassuringly.

He pressed his lips to her temple, and his warm chuckle brushed her brow. "With a bit of encouragement."

She shifted guiltily. She had been thrilled when he told her that he intended to stay and take over his father's practice, retaining her as the receptionist and housekeeper.

Even his rather half-hearted enthusiasm as he'd stated, "We'll see how things go," hadn't palled her relief. She'd looked him over critically. With some attention, he could be presentable, and surely blood would tell with his manner, and he would settle down. She mentally flipped through her catalogue of available women at church... Perhaps it was a bit soon to start inviting them over to lunch... Surely he would take up his family membership at the Colonial Club. She'd encourage him to attend on Ladies' Nights... It would need to be the right sort of wife for Lucien Blake, one that Jean could manage—get along with...

"Yes, you see, Matthew Lawson has talked to me about coming on as the police surgeon."

She had felt a prickle of concern. "Your father did that when his friend Doug Ashby asked the favour. But he didn't really enjoy it."

Lucien had shrugged. "It's a pay cheque."

Her mouth twisted in distaste. "Right, well. You'll be expected to present a certain image—"

"Image?" He'd been going through files in the office cabinet and looked at her.

"As a pillar of the community. A representative of the city."

He smirked. She had a quirk of dread, but pushed it away. "I'll do my best," he said, all innocence.

His gaze seemed to linger for a moment and she smoothed her hands down her skirt. "I'll get dinner then."

"I don't know if I'll be hungry—" he called after her as she bustled off to the kitchen. He did sit down to the meal that she prepared, but just picked at the food before announcing that he would go to Melbourne the next day. "I need to see my solicitor, make some business arrangements and such..." He ducked his head. "And I'll get some suits, right?"

Jean had dropped him off at the bus depot in his father's old car, fighting her worry that she'd never see him again. She'd returned to the house, where she was alone for the first time in her life. She'd rattled around for several days, rushing to answer the phone every time it rang. It was never Lucien Blake.

On the fourth day, she was bustling through the house, intent on fetching her sewing basket; there was a button off her cardigan which needed to be put back on quickly before one of her friends noticed it and saw it as a sign that she was letting herself go. A man was sitting in the lounge, causing her to start. "Excuse me?" Had Lucien allowed some friend to have a key?

The man stood.

"Lucien!" His shaggy hair had been properly shorn and slicked down straight. His beard and moustache had been trimmed equally short. He was wearing a tailored blue suit with a waistcoat.

"You told me that I'd need to clean myself up if I'm going to do this job," he said uncertainly.

"Yes, well—" Emotions warred in Jean. "You look very smart. The beard though. I'm not sure that patients, particularly women, will want a doctor with a beard."

He motioned her closer. She cautiously stepped to within a breath.

"There's a reason, you see," he explained. He ruffled his beard on the left side of his face. "Look closely."

She forced herself to focus in. A thin red line was visible under the facial hair. "A scar?"

"A rather significant scar."

"The war?"

"No, an evening in a disreputable nightclub in Berlin ended with a chap trying to slit my throat. He missed." Despite the blood-curdling tale, Lucien was grinning.

Jean took a step back. "Alright then."

"So I'll do?"

"You'll do." She straightened his tie. "People will say you're dignified."

His hand cupped her elbow. "Thank you, Jean."

Jean was not a woman to invite the touch of men outside her family. In all her years working for Thomas Blake, he'd never touched her like this. But she didn't step away from Lucien for some reason.

"You're welcome, Doctor Blake." The name stuck a bit in her throat, but she got it out.

He had caught the significance. "I feel as though I should look around for my father when you say that."

Brushing an invisible fleck of dust from his lapel, she had said quietly, "No, you're Doctor Blake now."

~ end chapter five

E/N: This should probably be the end of the story, but I have notes for another chapter, so one more!


	6. Chapter 6

Finally the final chapter! Busy at work and a severe case of the rambles dragged this whole thing out. Thanks again to Aussie for a strong hand on the Aussifying.

* * *

He drew his nightmares with heavy dark charcoal on paper as fine as human skin. He supposed a head shrink would say that the act would help him exorcise his demons, but instead they held him fast in their dark memories. Blood was as real when drawn in black.

His mother had taught him to draw when he was a boy, but he hadn't done it for years. He'd been able to scratch out a few images with the ends of burnt sticks on the battered walls of the prison camp's huts. Those pictures were long gone. In Ballarat to recuperate after his release, he'd felt the compulsion to draw again. He'd thought to use his mother's supplies, but the door was locked to her studio. He'd laid a hand on the dark wood as though he could feel her warmth through the oak panel. He didn't dare ask his father to unlock the door. Instead, he bought pencils and pads and spent hours drawing the events which wouldn't leave his racing thoughts.

When the sketchbooks were full, it was as though some festering abscess had been drained. He felt well enough to leave Ballarat, or rather that he must leave. It was an urgent need to flee the normality of it. The Army offered the chance for for another sort of life and he welcomed it.

He considered burning the pictures like temple offerings in tribute to the dead. But in the end, as horrific as they were, he needed to keep them. He was a witness and his testimony must be recorded. Putting them in an old tin Army locker, he'd shoved the box under his childhood bed when he left.

Sometimes since then, he'd pick up a thick charcoal and put it on the paper, but could only draw a single line before his hand shook too hard, and black was just black...

Jean woke to Lucien moaning and thrashing in the bed beside her. She reached for him even whilst pulling herself out of her own slumber.

"I'm here, Lucien," she said, reassuring.

He gasped in agony and fumbled behind him. "Oh, my back—"

"What is it?" Jean turned on her bedside lamp. It was just dawn and the room was still dim. "What's happened?"

"Cramp," he gasped.

The utter banality of the situation made her giggle, feeling more relief than she had any right to, considering that his face was twisted in pain.

"Darling, tell me where," she said, cajoling as he continued to writhe on the bed.

"My back," he repeated, completely unhelpful.

Guiding him onto his stomach, she felt his lower back. Sure enough, his muscles were rock hard and spasming. He moaned, confirming her find.

"Can't imagine what brought this on," he huffed as she pushed her the heels of her palms into tightness, forcing the muscles to loosen.

"Really?"

His chuckles were muffled in his pillow. "A wife should flatter her husband and not remind him that he's losing a step."

"First of all, the vow was to stand by you in sickness and in health." She used her elbow on a particularly pesky knot and he groaned in delight and pain. "Not to lie and deceive." Surely as a doctor, he wasn't going to be one of those husbands who ignored a complaint until he was incapacitated, then would be the world's worst patient. She sighed. But he was a man, and that would trump any education and rational thinking.

When she crawled onto his thighs to get more leverage for her massage, she gave off her own grumble of pain. She hurt in places she didn't know existed on her body. "And second, we're _both_ too old for this much activity after a period of being...sedentary."

He protested: "I think we've done pretty well, all things considered."

"No one's keeping score, Lucien."

He harrumphed into the pillow.

"How did you sleep—did you sleep?"

"I did, for a bit," he moaned, "Un...until this damn pain started—"

Jean ran her thumbs up his spine to his shoulder blades, causing him to giggle and groan in the same breath. She had to slide up and over his bum to settle on his back and squeeze his shoulders. He made a sound that was quite different from his exclamations of pain. After just one night, she recognised it.

"You are incorrigible," she murmured, leaning forward to kiss the back of his head. Then gave her own involuntary pain-filled hiss as her muscles protested from stretching.

He was quickly concerned and peeped up at her. "Dear, are you unwell?"

She eased off him and laid on the bed. "I will readily confess that I'm too old for this!" But her smile was gentle as she patted his bearded cheek.

"Where does it hurt?" He rolled over onto his side. "You can trust me. I'm a doctor."

She gave a snort. "Ninny."

"I'll have to make an examination." He got up on his knees.

"Don't be silly, Lucien."

"If you can't be silly in bed, where can you be?" he pointed out, kneading her abdomen with his strong fingers.

Gasping, she both welcomed the pressure on the tight muscles and responded to the caress.

He cupped her thigh and squeezed it rhythmically from hip to knee.

"Oh my...Goodness," she breathed. "That does feel nice."

He shifted his hands to the other leg, his expression serious and intent. "That's better?" he murmured, sounding very professional.

Jean would have thought he was simply being a dutiful caregiver, if his arousal wasn't bobbing in the shadow of his torso. Lazily, she stroked it, just to see his jaw clench. She liked this sense of power, even when she felt rather weak at the moment.

"A bit better," she whispered. "But I need more."

His head dropped and he snuffled under the curve of her breasts, the soft hair of his beard stroking the sensitive skin before he gently suckled at her nipples, first one, then the other. He massaged her shoulders, eliciting approving gasps as she arched up to his touch and mouth.

"More?"

What a foolish question. She pinched the tender flesh under his lowest rib and he huffed, breathing in her breast. His hand drifted down her torso, pressing his thumb along the muscles. She rose to meet the pressure, humming with pleasure. But then his fingers eased between her legs and she couldn't stop a gasp of pain.

He settled back on his heels. "I suppose there are some limits," he said regretfully.

"It'll be fine," she reassured him, sliding her hand up his leg toward his straining erection.

He shook his head and wagged his finger as he shifted away from her reach. "That won't do."

Laying down, he scooted under the covers again, then held them up for her. "I'm prescribing bedrest."

She grumbled but settled down beside him. "I'm fine," she insisted again. "Fit as a fiddle. You just surprised me, that's all." Draping her leg over his hip, she rubbed against him...and bit her lower lip at the discomfort.

Lucien raised his eyebrow. "Trust me. I am a doctor, you know. The tissues have become inflamed as a result—"

She lay her fingers to his lips. "Do not take the romance away, if you please." After heaving a martyred sigh, she rolled over so they were spooning. "I suppose that you're right. Get a bit more sleep and then we'll need to bathe and dress before Charlie's here at noon," she said drowsily.

He growled in her ear and pulled her tight to him. "And then the fun really begins. Off to see the world."

Tucking his arm under her neck, she gave the inside of his wrist a kiss. Her body was still thrumming. She blinked slowly, her fingertips tracing up his forearm. His lips tugged at her earlobe. Surrounded by his smell, heat and heavy limbs, the last thing she wanted to do was sleep.

Lucien sighed and buried his nose in her hair. He had no interest in sleeping, truth be told. He burrowed under the covers with his hand and cupped her bare hip, giving it a squeeze. He supposed that they would return to wearing nightclothes after tonight, but for now, he enjoyed feeling her warm skin against his. She shifted back against him, her bum sliding along his twitching erection. He groaned again, the sound rumbling through his chest. He heard her giggle.

"Tart," he murmured in her ear.

"The nerve," she said softly but not sounding the least bit angry. Actually, she pushed back harder.

"Shouldn't start something that we can't finish," he chided, even as he traced circles on her belly.

"I'm going to sleep. You're the one who's..." She inhaled as his thumb stroked the inside of her thigh. "You can't keep your hands to yourself."

"No, I can't." He suckled at her neck.

She trembled at his words and that pushed him over the edge. He slid his hand between her legs from behind. She gave only a deep moan when his fingers entered her, not another gasp of pain. Encouraged, he lifted her leg to rest on his hip and replaced his fingers with his length in one easy stroke.

"Lucien?" She sounded unsure and he immediately stilled. Shaking with want, he kissed her shoulders, swept her curls aside to press more kisses to her spine...

"Lucien." This time, no question, but a shuddering note and the need there nearly overwhelmed him. He took a deep breath to maintain control before pulling back then pushing in again, slow and shallow.

"Does that hurt?" He tried not to sound like a doctor, but she still gave a ragged laugh.

"Oh Lucien..." She placed an open-mouthed kiss at the inside of his elbow and added, "No."

"Goo...d," he panted. He was strung tight as a violin string, ready to snap. He pressed his face in her hair and kept his arm slung low across her belly, holding her firmly in place as he continued his measured motion.

Even as unnatural as this position felt, Jean was glad he couldn't see her face. She was beet-red from embarrassment and slack-jawed from arousal. He wasn't fully seated but somehow every stroke was...she didn't know what he was doing to her, but her entire body was quivering, flushes blooming over her skin whilst it was also peppered with gooseflesh. She didn't want him to ever stop. All the other times, she'd felt a pressure building, a fabulous and urgent need for completion. This sensation was as though waves of ecstasy washed through her with every movement of his hips.

Lucien had felt close to death plenty of times, but this was a different sort of torment. He wanted to fight for his life, to pound into her, overwhelm her, to carry her away—instead, he balanced her body on the tips of his fingers, a soap bubble that he never wanted to see burst. He loved this, feeling her shimmer and shine in his grasp. He suckled at the tight tendon connecting to her shoulder, the strong muscle bunching by her shoulder blade as she pushed back against his short thrusts.

"Jean, please—" He was begging for his life. He'd done that before, but this was from pleasure, not pain.

Hearing his desperation, she rolled onto her stomach and rose onto her knees. He covered her, heavy and powerful as the night sky, his sweaty chest slid across her back, his shaking hands planting on either side of her head. Gasping into the sheets, she could only nod as he rasped into her ear, "You are the world, Jean." What a silly thing for him to say, she thought vaguely. This was the universe as he finally fill her completely, his thrusts now deep and frantic and the sky was full of stars, spinning and flaring down to earth.

Lucien crashed to the ground. His fear was gone. He'd passed away and found that it was light and warm and all the colours in the ocean...He could feel Jean fighting for her breath under him. Bloody hell, he was crushing her.

When he rolled off, reality struck, cold and cruel. "Oh, my back," he gasped, fumbling to squeeze the spasming muscles.

Resting her cheek on his chest like shipwreck survivor grasping onto a life raft, she weakly mumbled, "Go to sleep, my dearest fool."

He kissed her forehead. He wanted to tell her everything—how he'd found this merciful peace in her embrace, how he finally had some hope to be a better man, how she'd given him a reason to try, if not succeed—

"Jean?"

"Mmm?"

"Love you."

"I certainly hope so."

He pressed his lips softly to her brow again. Her limbs went limp; she was asleep already. His teeth flashed in the dimness as he smiled down at her and he finally let his eyelids drift shut.

* * *

His mother had kept bright, garish flowering plants in the sunroom. The room would be heavy with musk when they were all blooming. After her death, everything was left to wither and die. The first time he walked into the sunroom when he came back, it was filled with life, green and warm and smelling vital. There was no clinical odour of his father's encroaching death here. He'd sank to the seat, the book that was his excuse to hide here slack in his hand. Jean had bustled in. She obviously didn't see him. She started and nearly dropped the pot she was carrying. Its bright pink blooms quivered indignantly.

"Oh!" she said disagreeably.

He smiled vaguely. "Sorry."

"Can I help you?" She held the pot tightly.

"No, that is, I'm just here to read." He waved his book at her.

"Alright then." She took the plant to the table and began to dig around in the dirt, a mysterious process that he had no idea what she was on about, but it somehow relaxed him. He leant back on the seat, his book forgotten beside him.

Jean was absorbed in her tasks. As she watered and trimmed spent blooms, the floor became scattered with lush petals. She began to hum; he recognised it as the tune that they'd sung for his father. That coupled with the smells of loam and perfume as she stirred the soil and foliage, aroused him but it was something more primal than sexual attraction. His gaze settled on Jean's sleek form. She was the lithe deer moving through the dappled forest. She rose on her toes to tend to a hanging plant and her backside and long thighs tightened with the effort.

He crossed his legs and had his gaze firmly on her face when she turned back. A tendril of hair had come loose from its hairpins and she brushed it aside with the back of her hand, only to have it fall in a lazy curl across her brow. From that day on, he'd never be able to enter the sunroom without feeling both comfort and desire.

"Oh blast, we'll be late," she barked in his ear.

Lucien had been sleeping deeply for once. Jean's words broke through a jumble of his dream involving floating flower petals, dappled light under trees heavy with apples, and a stream babbling somewhere near.

He groaned. "I'm up." But she already was, snatching her dressing gown from the back of the door and dashing from the bedroom. He stretched, his spine cracking the effort. This time it was a good pain. He scratched his belly and grinned. He liked this whole married thing quite a lot.

After putting on his own robe, he wandered into the kitchen. The kettle was on, and Jean was gathering the makings for a quick breakfast. She swatted his bottom as he got in her way, nosing around the cupboards in some vague semblance of helping. "Get in the bath, and I'll have your breakfast ready when you come out."

"We've got time," he said, "and I want to help."

She turned to get the milk from the fridge, but he was in the way. She took a calming breath. "Fine. Sit down like a good boy."

"But I want to—"

"That's the best help that you can give me."

With a wordless grumble, he sat.

She served three minute eggs and a plate of toast with a full pot of strong tea. They sat side by side at the big table, their thighs touching. Like some teenager, he draped his arm on the back of her chair, making eating more difficult but twice as delicious.

Keeping an eye on the clock, Jean announced that they _must_ bathe, and now. He padded after her to the bathroom, content in a way that he hadn't felt in a number of years. She opened the taps full bore, and ordered him to start brushing his teeth whilst she tied her hair up with a ribbon. They jostling at the sink, elbows knocking, somehow pleased him greatly. It meant that they were truly married.

She tested the water and announced it was suitably hot. "Ladies first," he said but then gave her a smirk. "Unless we can share."

Squinting at him distrustfully, she dropped her gown and stepped into the tub. "I doubt that will actually make things go more quickly."

He was too enthralled to comprehend what she was saying. He saw nude female bodies every day, but this was Jean's, and she was revealing it to him easily and without shame. Frankly, this part was surprising him. He'd hoped that she'd be passionate under the covers, but her eagerness to enjoy these smaller intimacies was giving him nearly overwhelming joy.

His wide grin made her heart constrict and she had to look away as she settled into the water.

"I can wash your back whilst you do the front," he offered virtuously. "You'll be clean in half the time."

She scrubbed with a washer while he swirled soap around her back and shoulders in gentle strokes. They both rinsed the suds with handfuls of water and she ignored his kisses on her bare spine. When she stepped from the tub, he was waiting for her with a large towel and wrapped her in it. He kissed the love bite that he'd left in the crook of her neck. She watched him in the mirror. "I'm just glad that I've put out a blouse with a high collar," she said.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I'm a brute." He sounded more proud than apologetic as he slid the towel down far enough to expose her shoulder blade and a beard burn for him to kiss.

Reaching back, she patted his cheek. "They'll fade."

"But I'll be giving you new ones," he said wickedly.

"I suppose you will."

He peered in the mirror and ruffled his beard. "I could shave this off. Surely my scar won't horrify anyone after I've shocked the town in so many other ways."

She laughed.

"I'd be a stranger, though. It would be like a whole new chap in bed with you."

She flashed to the handsome young man that he'd been, all dimples and golden curls and she blushed scarlet. "I know what you look like without a beard," she stammered, trying to keep her cool.

He noticed her embarrassment. "That's right. You saw me before going to Edinburgh. God, all I did was lay around the house and mope—" His brow furrowed. He'd done a bit more than mope, if he remembered. Courting the virtuous Monica had left him seriously frustrated which led to—

He cocked his eyebrow as he noted Jean's reddened cheeks and shifting eyes in the mirror's reflection.

Pressing his mouth to her ear, he murmured, "Were you a naughty girl, Jeanie?"

"I'll be naughty all right if you don't get into that bath." She pulled the slipping towel up tight to her throat.

He wasn't cowed. "I certainly hope so." He couldn't stop teasing her; his heart was bursting with happiness. "If you like, you can watch again—"

"Lucien!" she gasped.

As much as he was enjoying this, she did have a point. Time was ticking. With a sigh, he took her place in the cooling water. Only to burst out laughing when she started to comb his damp hair. "I'm not one of your boys."

"Then stop mucking around like they do!"

Another deep sigh and he grabbed the bar of soap. "I am finding marriage very rewarding, Jean."

She was at the mirror, trying to get her own hair back into the lovely set that she'd had yesterday. First order of business in Melbourne would be to visit a salon. For now, her hat was going to have to cover its disarray. "That's good," she said, distracted.

"I mean beyond the obvious. This, this is quite nice."

She turned around to chide him for blathering and then noticed his eyes were shimmering with tears. She cupped his cheek, and gave him a gentle kiss. "It is, rather, isn't it," she said quietly. "I'm not going anywhere, Lucien."

His jaw clenched beneath her fingers and he looked away. Planting another kiss on the top of his head, she asked, "Would you like me to wash your back too?"

"That would be lovely, thank you."

Silence but for the splash of water, and they washed his body, cleansing him in more ways than one.

"Thank you," he said again as she poured water down his back.

"It's a wife's duty." Jean felt as though she was trying to break some spell. Tears were prickling in her eyes too.

"Do you know how I solve crimes?"

That was an odd thing to say. She sat back on her heels and grasped the bath's rim for balance.

"I visualise the scenes, imagine what the killer was doing, thinking—"

"How...upsetting."

"No, not really. I've found that the unimaginable is the most terrifying thing. If I'm there, in the action, I can't be afraid. I can manage it."

"Alright," she said slowly, stroking his hair which was trying to curl up as it dried. He'd need some hair cream to keep it in place.

"I'll admit—" He peeked at her over his shoulder, looking all the world like one of her boys when they were about to confess to her. "I visualised how...last night would be." He wasn't going to say that he imagined having sex with her regularly. Even with a wedding ring on her finger, it seemed a violation.

"Did you now." The side of her mouth quirked with a smile.

"And you know what?"

"What?"

"It was nothing like I imagined." At first she had a stab of worry at his words, that it meant he'd been disappointed. Then he gave that wide, enticing grin again, and she had to kiss him, just soft lips and a trace of warm tongue, an enticement returned. Everything was going to be alright, at least for one this one golden moment in the bathroom, with a sponge floating between his raised knees and the sink tap dripping in the background.

She stood. "I'll put the sheets in the washing machine. We can leave those on the line for Sally to iron and fold."

"Surely Sally can wash them as well," he called after her.

Jean stuck her head back in the room. "I will not have her seeing our sheets in that condition," she said severely and he could only laugh and splash the water like a baby.

Doing his washing was the first thing that he allowed her to do for him, yet it had felt so oddly intimate to find his underpants ironed and folded at the foot of his bed. Even more so to discover a hole in the seat of one pair very neatly darned. As Thomas had slept more and more, Lucien spent evenings in the lounge, with the wireless playing music, and would read through the musty novels that filled the cases. His heart rate was finally slowing, as though he'd been running for miles and the race was over. Jean would join him with her sewing basket or knitting bag. But it was all so foreign and unknown to him. His mother had not been a housewife sort, and certainly not Mei Lin. He wasn't sure if his lovely wife would even know how to thread a needle. For some reason, these very commonplace activities filled him with wonder. The curve of Jean's neck as she was bent to her tasks. The slow swing of her foot, her legs crossed and calf flexed with the motion. The flash of her fingers, red nails leading the way. She'd glance up and catch his gaze. At first, she seemed afraid, but then a small smile, encouraging, and his eyes would go back to his book hurriedly.

"Ow!" she cried out.

He put his book aside. "What is it?"

Her finger was in her mouth. She smiled around it. "Nothing," she mumbled.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"Just a prick."

"Let me get your a bandage. With all the cleaning up after Father, you need to keep any open wounds covered."

Ignoring her protests, he sat beside her on the sofa with the first aid kit. "Let me see."

His leg was touching hers. "I can put it on myself."

"I'm a doctor."

"It's not something that quite requires a GP," she said even as she offered her hand.

He smiled but carefully examined her finger. "There it is," he said, spotting the drop of blood oozing.

She was staring at his strong neck and watching the slow movement of his Adam's apple as he spoke. His top buttons were undone and she could see his bare chest. Her head was swarming. If he'd taken her in his arms at that moment, she would not have resisted.

"There we go."

She blinked. A bandaid was secure around her finger. "Thank you." He would leave as soon as his father died, and she was glad. There was no way that she could live this way.

But he hadn't left.

The ambulance had carried away Thomas Blake's body. The district nurse had cleaned up and the smell of disinfectant still hung in the air, stinging their eyes for days afterward. As though dark drapes were closed on their tentative relationship, they'd spoken only of what was necessary to arrange the funeral. She was afraid of reminding him to leave, forcing her to find a new position and home, and he was terrified of her grief.

At the graveside, no one would have been wrong for identifying her as chief mourner, as she wept openly into a black-edged handkerchief and Lucien stood behind the first row in his odd suit and bushy beard. Thomas Blake had been a popular man, and a pillar of the community. It was a large crowd. Afterwards, everyone went the Colonists' Club. In those hallowed halls, Lucien had been even more uncomfortable. That place had reminded him of everything that he didn't like about Ballarat.

"Drink, Master Lucien?"

He looked around, and at his elbow there was a little man in an uniform offering a tray. He squinted at the old waiter—well, he was on his way to being an old man himself.

"Cec, bloody hell, is that you?"

"Yes, sir. I suppose it's Doctor Blake now. Or do you prefer Major?"

Lucien's wide smile faded. "Lucien is fine."

"As you wish, sir." Cec held the tray closer and Lucien snagged the whisky glass with a smirk.

"You know what I need, Cec."

Lucien could see Patrick Tyneman approaching and he steeled himself. Cec faded away, leaving him alone to face whatever hypocrisy the town's most prominent citizen was about to put forth. These sort of encounters were definitely a strike against staying here.

At the last moment, he turned away rather than talk with Tyneman—an terrible social snub which set the room buzzing—and fled to the snooker room. He was racking up a game when a dark figure appeared in the doorway. He squinted, about to tell whoever it was to bugger off, when the man stepped into the room. He was in a police uniform, and there was something familiar in his sharply-planed face. Lucien allowed himself to smile.

Finally home, and drained from being pleasant to dozens of strangers and near strangers, Lucien found Jean in the kitchen, washing up the few dishes from the morning. She was still dabbing her eyes, this time with the corner of her apron.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said. "I hadn't said it earlier."

Lucien leant on the table and folded his arms. "It's not a surprise. I knew the outcome of his disease."

She stared at him. "I meant, I should be comforting you. He was your father, and here I am—" She tossed up her hands. "Being a useless sop."

"He was my father, but your—" Lucien floundered. "Your good friend," he muttered.

"Doctor Blake was a very good friend to me." She raised her chin. "He paid for night classes so I be his medical receptionist, not just a useful broom. He encouraged me to read anything in the house, to join the local theatre group...He was a very good friend," she ended softly.

Lucien finally understood. He was ashamed of his earlier assumptions about their relationship.

"I want you to know...that is...if you want to stay...nothing is to change."

She didn't understand. "What?"

"Matthew Lawson—You know Matthew?"

"Chief Superintendent?" Lucien nodded. "I know of him," said Jean, "he was at funeral."

"Yes, he found me at the club. He's offered me Father's old job as police surgeon."

"I see." She didn't.

"And some of the practice's patients seem willing to give me a chance. So I thought I'd give it a go. At least for a bit. See if I can stand it."

"It?"

"This." He waved his hand around aimlessly.

She furrowed her brow.

"Ballarat. All the old names and places. This house."

"I see." She still didn't.

"You would carry on as before."

She took a deep breath, a loud sound in the deathly silence kitchen, and he knew she was going to start crying again. She fled the room rather than doing it in front of him. Relieved, he went to the office.

Quickly flipping through the practice's ledger, he wrote down the amount of quarterly billings on a notepad and added on the figure that Matthew had given him. Then he pulled the letter from his pocket from a private investigator in Hong Kong who'd given Lucien an idea of his fees. On Lucien's salary at the mine clinic, he couldn't swing it, but now it was possible. He would just have to manage living in his father's house, in his father's life, with his father's obligations.

Lucien started to go through his father's desk methodically. Keys to the cabinets, a number of rubberbands, a case with his mother's photograph and a lock of her hair. When he pressed his nose to it, he swore that he could still smell her. At the very back of the drawer, he found a heavy key on a red ribbon. He instantly knew what it was. Since entering this house, he hadn't even tried the door. Somehow he'd known it would still be locked all these years later.

Rising, he crossed the corridor. He looked back at the desk. He could fetch the key. He returned to the office and poured himself a whisky instead. And another. Then found another bottle.

Jean came downstairs, her tears wrung out and face washed. Time to get supper started. Routine kept her steady. She almost tripped over Lucien's prone body slumped against the studio door. When Jean had offered to clean the rooms, Thomas had refused so strongly that she'd known not to bring up the topic again.

She shook his shoulder. "Lucien?"

He blinked slowly. "I"m awake."

She hadn't thought that he was asleep. "Did you want the key for the studio?"

"I know where it is." He dragged himself to his feet. "This is just where I came to rest."

She tried one more time. "Would you like me to clean the studio?"

He showed the whites of his eyes. "Not necessary." And he was gone, dissolving into the corridor shadows.

She followed. "Will you be taking Doctor Blake's bedroom? It's convenient to the door and phone, when after hour emergencies happen."

He stood in the doorway, staring at his father's stripped bed. "I...Yes."

"I'll get on it then."

He turned and was suddenly looming over her. "I'll go to Melbourne." If she'd known better, she would think he was staring at her breasts. "Need to get some business done. Then I'll be ready to start."

"I'll give everything a wipedown and a wax while you're gone then," she said as she crossed her arms. "But I won't go through anything. Doctor Blake was a very private man, you see, and I'll leave that to you."

He'd much rather that she sort through his father's intimate mementos. One drawer had nearly killed him. But Lucien had nodded numbly.

The first night back from Melbourne, with the wireless mumbling off in the lounge, Lucien had armed himself with a fresh bottle of scotch and had started to go through the drawers of the bedroom dressing table.

In an old stationery box in a bottom drawer, he found what Thomas hadn't been able to say to him. It contained clippings about the Singapore siege and fall, and the few sparse reports about Commonwealth prisoners during the war. There were the photographs of Lucien, Mei Lin and Li which he had sent his father. Lucien was deeply grateful to have these pictures now. He put them aside on the bed with a shaking hand. At the very bottom was Lucien's own angry letters to his father, and last of all, letters from Thomas to Lucien written, but never sent.

Lucien scanned the letters. In them, Thomas expressed his remorse, and tried to explain himself. How Thomas himself had brought an exotic orchid to the hay field that was Ballarat, and had regretted it in many ways.

 _I would want your family to have all the happiness, Son, and that may not be possible here._

A letter dated February 1942, urged Lucien to send his wife and daughter to Australia. _I fear for your family, Lucien. Have them come to me, and we'll sort it all out later. Surely they will be safe here—_

Tears blinded Lucien, but there was no more to read. It was the last letter written. The only other correspondence was a telegram from the war office, telling Thomas of Lucien's status as prisoner of war.

Lucien felt as though he was going to be ill, and even reached for the waste paper bin, but his stomach finally settled. Pride may have cost his wife and daughter their lives, and he could never forgive himself. If necessary, he would spend every pound, down to his last shilling and penny, that he could spare to discover their fate. If they were alive, he would find them and finally bring them to this house as Thomas intended. He'd fetched the tin box from under his childhood bed, and had added the letters and photographs to his collection of horrific sketches. When he put that box away, it was to his new bedroom.

The sheets hung out, Jean hurried to dress. She had put her going-away outfit in the bedroom wardrobe, along with her undergarments in the drawers which Lucien had cleared out for her. Now she lay out their things on the bared mattress, hers beside his. He joined her, scrubbing his hair with a towel.

"Thank you, my dear," he said, giving her cheek a peck.

Somewhat self-conscious, Jean wiggled into her foundation garment. Then again, Lucien had somehow extracted her from it yesterday evening with little effort and she had no real memory of how he accomplished the task.

"Need a fasten up?" he asked and she turned her back to let him assist. This earned her another quick kiss on her bare shoulder after the final hook was latched through the eye.

"You don't need this," he said, nearly spanning her waist with his big hands.

"Yes, I do, dearest," she replied. "Or everyone in town will think I'm the sort of woman who doesn't wear foundation garments."

He furrowed his brow in confusion but it all made perfect sense to her.

As she did up her stockings to the garters of her girdle, Lucien watched appreciatively in the dressing table mirror. He had no quarrel with this part of her ensemble.

Frowning at his reflection, he viciously smoothing his hair flat with comb and Brylcreem and she wondered how to tell him that she preferred it curly. Perhaps point out that she found Charlie's hair adorable with its thick waves?

He reached for his shirt, but she stopped him to tuck his singlet into his underpants back and front.

"Don't wake the dragon," he warned playfully.

"No pet names, dear," said Jean airly, "it's crass." She held out his shirt for him and after glaring her down, Lucien slipped his arms into the sleeves. She came around to button him up.

"I can do that," he said.

"I enjoy doing this," she said carefully, and handed him the trousers for the suit.

After he fastened the fly, he told her, "Your turn then. You're behind." He held her slip above her head and after a moment of hesitation, she raised her arms to let him slide it down. He smoothed the silk over her hips and she gave him yet another peck as a reward.

Her pale yellow chiffon blouse was delicate and she was actually grateful for the assistance as he fastened the tiny mother of pearl buttons up the back.

Her suit was one of her new outfits. Lucien had taken her to Melbourne to purchase her trousseau, after much protesting on her part. But in the back of her mind, she'd realised that she was to assume a quite different role now, and should dress the part. And she preferred not to purchase her clothing in Ballarat for that part she was to play. It would not do to arrive at a social occasion in the same outfit as Susan Tyneman. Nor should she make her own clothes anymore, regretfully. Lucien had also pointed out that she should only get enough garments for the journey to London, as she'd want to purchase the latest fashions there.

She'd considered arguing with him that she was hardly some clotheshorse to acquire mounds of fancy goods, but then realised that she had to expand her wardrobe a great deal to be Mrs Blake. With that in mind, her going-away suit was a herringbone pattern of seaglass blue and yellow wool, a slim skirt with a kick pleat slit in the back and a collarless jacket.

She'd helped Lucien on with his waistcoat and tied his best silk tie. She would need to update his wardrobe next, she thought. But for now, she simply smoothed his suit jacket along his shoulders and deemed his ready to go.

"You can help me with this," she said, holding out her new pearl necklace.

The jewellery had been yet another spat before the wedding. Just one day after she agreed to marry him, even before she would wear his ring in public, he'd taken her to the bank to view a box full of jewels. Her head had swam at the sight.

"You had these all along? Why didn't you sell them?"

He'd tipped his head, puzzled. "These belong to Mrs Blake, whomever she is. Not me."

Feeling the weight of his gaze, and that of the bank manager, she'd sorted through the items. They were all of the style of the last century, although some were of an artistic type from the teens. There were precious gems, but few pieces were anything which would go with her current wardrobe. What had caught her eye were the lovely cameos and ropes of large pearls. Those were timeless.

"Do whatever you like with them. Have them made over or sold to buy new," Lucien had said. "They're all yours now."

"Surely not," she'd said, even as her mind was working. "They were your mother's—"

"Not really. As I said, they were Mrs Blake's. Some my mother never even wore. Most she found too old fashioned, and that was in 1915."

So she'd taken the pearls to the jeweller's, and had them restrung as a lovely three strand piece, and he used the large diamond clasp for one of the more hideous necklaces to fasten it closed. From the remaining pearls, he made two sets of earrings, one elaborate drop style, and one everyday pair of posts for her new life as a doctor's wife. She'd worn the drops for her wedding and now put on the posts.

Turning her back to him, she held up the necklace for Lucien to fasten for her. He looped the two ends behind her neck and carefully held the jewelled clasp away from the delicate silk of her blouse's high neck, flouncy folds that thankfully covered her love bites. When he had worked the clasp closed, he nosed aside her hair to press a kiss behind her ear.

"Lovely," he breathed.

After she toed on her new snakeskin pumps—her faithful old suede pumps had been put in the charity bin—she locked the new jewellery case which was on the dressing table. In the past, any jewellery which she carried on trips went in a velvet bag tucked her handbag. Now she had a crocodile-hide case with a sturdy lock, part of a large set of luggage, also purchased in Melbourne. Most were still there, waiting at their hotel to be filled with the garments which were being tailored for her and Lucien; evening dress for both, more day suits and dresses, even a few fur stoles and wraps. There had been another discovery, that this mythical Mrs Blake also inherited a refrigerated room of furs. All out of style and completely unsuitable. Jean had felt overwhelmed for a moment before she'd gone through them, and decided which pieces could be made into collars for her new cashmere overcoats, or the wraps for evening. Her work in the theatre made her keep seeing these as costumes for a role, but as she looked at herself in the mirror and tucked a curl behind her ear, a weight settled on her shoulders. This was her new life, not just a nightly performance on a two week run, never to go back to Jean Beazley, housekeeper.

But her practical spirit lived on. Most of the jewellery had been turned over to a discreet man in Melbourne, who'd remake the uglier and outdated things into useful pieces. For now, she'd have enough for their travels; a few diamond brooches and the cameos, a sapphire necklace, bracelet and earring set which would go with her evening gowns, along with a lovely group of opal pieces which had caught her fancy.

Lucien fastened his watch on his wrist. "Charlie should be here soon. Best take one last look around the house, see if we've forgotten anything." When he added, "We'll not be home for months," her heart fluttered uneasily.

They went to the lounge. "If you like the job that Sally Watkins does while we're gone," Lucien said, "if she keeps the house to your standards, we can retain her."

"For what?" Jean was checking her knitting needles, assuring that she had all those which she'd need whilst away. Although she supposed that last night had shown, like Lucien's reading, that she'd not complete as much as she expected.

"As a housekeeper."

"What need would we have for a housekeeper?" She turned to face him and he was struck again at her transformation in her smart suit, updated hairstyle and lovely pearl pieces.

Lucien opened his mouth, then closed it. He sensed thin ice. He chose his words carefully. "You're my wife now. There's no need for you to be working all day—"

"What else would I do? You've said this is my home too. I want to keep my own house clean and orderly." Her voice was high-pitched.

"You don't need to do that anymore," he repeated. "You can finally relax. Put your feet up and be a lady of leisure."

This outraged Jean greatly. "What, I'm to co-chair the Garden Club fete with Susan Tyneman? Sit around with those toffy-nosed wives in the Colonists', drink gin and tonics for lunch?"

"But Jean—" He held his arms open wide but she didn't step into them. Her head was whirling and she felt something close to panic.

"Do you think...Do you believe I married you so I can put my feet up? For these?" She flipped the pearl necklace. "To dine in the ladies' lounge at the country club?"

"No one will think that—"

"I don't give a damn what anyone else thinks. If I did, I wouldn't have married you. It's been the hardest thing that I've ever done to put my pride aside and marry you, despite knowing everyone in town thinks I'm after your money, or to have Mrs Lucien Blake engraved on my stationery."

He was just staring at her and even in the flurry of a row, she was drawn to him. Loving this man had been hard enough, but now she'd learnt what he could do to her physically, and that she could never leave him. She had always thought she was stronger than any sexual attraction, but she was wrong and this terrified her. In frustration, she pressed her balled fists to his chest. "I care what you think! I love you, you idiot! I married you because I love you!"

"That's good...to know," he stuttered.

Still furious, she whirled away. She shouldn't say anything more, she shouldn't— "I know that you just assume this house takes care of itself whilst you're off all day, but it doesn't. If you married me to keep things comfortable and to your expectations, we shouldn't change anything now—"

He gripped her shoulders. "What? Why do you think that I married you? To have my slippers waiting by my favourite chair?"

"You need order, regularity. I'm most definitely that."

He pressed his face against her hair. His chuckle was full of tears. "Who ever told you that? You're the most aggravating woman I've ever known. I never know what you're going to toss at me day to day. Thank God that I love you, or I'd have fired you years ago."

That got her goat. She jerked out of his grasp and turned to face him, hands on her hips. "Well!" she hissed, tossing her head back, ready to offer him an annulment, but then remembered they'd rather shot that option in the last twelve hours. "I'm not the one using the dinner joint for target practice or causing minor explosions in the house."

Maddeningly, he simply said, "But you always know that I'm going to do such things."

She blinked, knocked speechless. He only grinned at her. She began to worry for his mental health.

"What are you smiling about?"

"You love me."

She was not amused. "I've said it before."

"But never when you were angry. You must really mean it."

She unbent a bit. Laying a hand on his chest, she could only shake her head. "Of course I do," she grumbled.

He held her stiff body in his arms. How could she be so strong, ready for battle, when he was shaking like a puppy in the cold? "As much as I love your roast chicken, I've selfishly kept you here because you keep me sane, make me want to be better—"

She could speak her greatest fears while focused on the dark wool of his shoulder. "If the war hadn't happened, you'd be married to someone like Monica, or some English girl, or even living in Singapore with Mei Lin. Not me. Not a farmgirl."

"I suppose," he admitted slowly. "And I'd be worse for it. You think I'm a right bastard now, imagine me without the humbling experience of a few dozen canings." He chuckled, but she squeezed his waist in reproach. Her arms had somehow found their way around his middle.

"Don't even joke about that!" Tears filled her eyes. "I'd give this all up for you to have been unharmed—"

"I know. And that's why I love you." He breathed at her temple, stirring the fine hairs there. "This is not the life that I would have imagined for myself at twenty, at thirty, at forty. But sometimes we end up right where we're meant to be. This is exactly the life that I want. And if you want to be on your knees scrubbing the floors—"

Damn her lipstick—Jean kissed him deeply, needing to find a dark, comforting place in the bright room. When their mouths finally eased apart, they leant foreheads together, and smiled.

He stroked her jawline with his thumb and just when she felt the haze of desire descending over her, he jerked her away by saying, "I wanted you to know, I've gone to a few AA meetings."

She stepped back and smoothed her hair. "You don't have to do that—"

Folding his arms, he said tightly, "I think that I should try."

"I mean, you don't have to tell me. From what I understand of it all, you would want to be, well, anonymous."

"But you're my wife. You should know. I just...I can't promise you anything."

She tipped her head. "I wouldn't have married you if I didn't believe in you. But it's on you, what you decide to do and how much effort you put it in it. Stop trying to be the best man for other people, Lucien. Do it for yourself. Forgive yourself."

"What have I got to forgive myself for?"

"For living. For making it. It's alright."

She found that he wouldn't meet his gaze. It reminded her of how he'd show her nothing but the whites of his eyes in the early days. Turning away, she busied herself with writing last minute instructions to Sally.

"Yes, right." He pulled down his waistcoat. "Is there anything else that you want to check?"

"I better look into the sunroom," she said brightly, stepping behind her own walls.

She moved quickly from plant to plant, checking the soil for moisture. She'd left very specific instructions for Charlie on a clipboard with each pot's water needs spelled out.

She was nearly finished when Lucien eased in, a rolled up booklet in his hand. "Everything shipshape?"

She brushed her hands together. "I think so. Just need to close up the suitcases and put them in the boot, I guess."

Just to aggravate her, he sat down and started thumbing through the booklet.

She checked her watch but he was intent on his reading. It was the International Shipping News, she noted.

"I thought that all our tickets were arranged."

"Perhaps we'll want to make a change," he mused without looking up.

"What?"

"We could leave off going to Germany, and take an earlier boat to the Far East." He flashed her a smile. "We'll be back to Europe someday. And perhaps it's best for you not to see the scenes of my misspent youth."

"We'd come home early?" This surprised her.

"No, I think that we should add Papua New Guinea."

She shook her head in confusion. His gaze remained firmly on the page. "To visit Christopher's grave."

She sat suddenly beside him. "Visit...his grave?" she echoed.

"It seems about right. If we're visiting the rest of the family."

Family. She supposed that they had formed a rather odd and far-flung family unit with this marriage.

"Yes," she managed to say, "that would be lovely."

She leant against Lucien and he kissed her hair. "Then I'll change the tickets when we are in Melbourne," he said quietly.

Their peace was broken by the ringing of a bike bell. Charlie had arrived on his pushbike. Jean quickly wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and Lucien cleared his throat.

"I better repair my makeup," she told him, rising and smoothing her skirt down.

"I'll start taking the luggage out," he said. They were both glad for the call to action.

After she'd freshened up and put on her hat and coat, Jean joined Charlie and Lucien at the front of the house, tugging on her gloves.

Charlie appeared surprised at her transformation. "Mrs Beaz—" He cringed at his mistake. "Mrs Blake, how fine you look."

"Don't you think it's about time that you started calling me Jean?" she suggested.

He looked horrified, so she didn't press. Lucien tossed the last suitcase in the boot. "We're ready," he called out and slammed it shut.

Lucien sat with Jean in the backseat, draped his arm across her shoulders and snuggled her close to him. Charlie's gaze shot up to the rearview mirror but Jean decided not to dissuade her bridegroom. She lay her hand on his thigh and he smiled at her. Lucien nuzzled her neck.

"It's been a few decades, but I seem to remember that making love on a train was particularly enjoyable," he murmured. "The motion, of course."

"You are insatiable," she hissed back. She quickly glanced at Charlie and could swear his neck was blushed red.

"I am indeed." Lucien was unrepentant. "I've got this insatiable bride you see. I'm just trying to keep up."

"I've been thinking," Charlie said loudly.

Lucien had slipped his hand under the hem of Jean's skirt, his thumb stroking her kneecap. She gripped his wrist and asked Charlie brightly, "What is it?"

"I got to talking with a few chaps at the wedding, and they're looking to share a house. Looking for one more. I thought it would be for the best."

Lucien leant forward to squeeze Charlie's shoulder. "You don't have to that. You know that you'll always have a home with us."

"It's time," he said shortly, his eyes quickly shifting from the mirror.

Jean flushed at his discomfort but Lucien settled back beside her and his hand cupped her knee again. "I understand, Charlie. A bloke likes to get out on his own."

"You'll always be welcome for tea," Jean said.

They arrived at the station with just minutes to spare. Lucien called over a porter to take their luggage. Jean hoped that Lucien would have better time management on this trip, or she'd get grey hairs.

She kissed Charlie on the cheek. "Goodbye, Charlie. We'll write."

"Bon voyage," the young man said with a bit of a flair. "Jean," he added, giving her a shy smile.

She kissed him again, squeezing his arm for emphasis.

Baggage sorted, and the correct train car found, Lucien returned. He pumped Charlie's hand and added to the promise to write.

He slipped an arm around Jean's waist. "Come along, Mrs Blake," said Lucien. "Your carriage awaits."

She tucked her arm through his. "Right you are, Doctor Blake. Let this journey begin."

~ End


End file.
